


The Cersei Lannister Finishing School for Exceptional Young Ladies

by SanSanFanFan



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Britain, F/M, Modern AU, Turn of the Century, edwardian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:07:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2616233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanSanFanFan/pseuds/SanSanFanFan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa begged her father and mother to let her attend the prestigious finishing school in the South, once she had seen Joffrey, the headmistress’s son, that is. But now she’s regretting being stuck in the cold and draughty old manor house and being taught by a woman who might not be everything she advertised herself as.</p><p>But then she meets the foul mouthed and often drunk groundskeeper and her perspectives on class and manners change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [renedeschain](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=renedeschain).



> Written for Renedeschain who wanted a High School AU and I decided to do something different instead ;D
> 
> A part of the SSFF birthday fic doodah... more chapters to follow...

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

She sighed deeply and tried again.

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

Lady Cersei was correct. Her accent was still sneaking through, even though she thought she was sounding out her vowels correctly. 

“The raaihn in Spaihn falls mahnly on the plahn!” She announciated. Loudly. Before sighing and flouncing angrily in an unladylike way.

She shivered. The rain was beginning to fall mainly on her as she meandered her way across the grounds of the Old Keep. She angled herself slightly to walk diagonally towards the great walls of the estate where she might find some cover. She could perhaps have stayed indoors with the other young ladies and joined them for an afternoon of embroidery. Or she could have partnered with the ever so sharp Lady Margaery to play Bridge against the few young women who hadn’t already been beaten several times over by the Tyrell girl. Instead she had decided to go for a walk, her laced black ankle boots eating up the minutes until another disappointing dinner.

There was an excessive amount of spare time at the Cersei Lannister Finishing School for Exceptional Young Ladies. Something that had simply not been mentioned in the advert Sansa had read in the Lady!

The lessons that they did have; deportment, penmanship... elocution, of course… were more often than not given by Miss Mordane rather than the famous Lady Cersei herself. She did sometimes make a graceful, heavily perfumed, entrance to one of the classes. Sansa’s repetitive practice of her elocution lessons now was in part due to the cutting remarks she had made about Sansa’s Northern accent the last time she had visited. But more often than not Lady Cersei stayed in the luxurious parlour that Sansa had been shown on her tour of the school. The parlour that Sansa, and the other girls, had found themselves immediately banned from when they had finally moved into the school. They had the draughty dorms in the attic while Lady Cersei had the roaring hearth and the deep Indian rugs.

Sansa imagined her there, reclining in the yellow silks she favoured, reading poetry in an elegant way… 

The dogs started barking again interrupting her thoughts. 

Night after night since she had come here she had heard their deep and fierce barks from around the grounds. One night, pulling a shawl about her shoulders and over her cotton nightdress, she had peered through a small round attic window above her bed, looking for them. She had seen a lamp light moving in the dark, over by the high red stone walls of the estate’s boundaries. Someone was out there, guarding them.

She shouldn’t be out here. Walking about the grounds wasn’t banned as such. But Miss Mordane had a particular look she would give her if she was found doing something so… un-genteel. A look like she’d been sucking on lemons!

But Sansa came from a Northern estate where not marching across the land and getting the blood pumping at least once a day was unthinkable, heresy even! Often she would go about with her brothers and sisters, a merry band of Starks tromping through the woods like muddy outlaws! Especially her little sister, who would insist on making swords from branches. What would Lady Cersei make of Arya’s accent?! Sansa had at least attempted to curtail the Northernness of her voice when she’d realised how deeply unfashionable it was in the South. Arya seemed to revel in the burr and lilt of her Northern tones! Arya’d mocked her the most for her desire to attend the finishing school. 

Her parents had not mocked, they had just looked a little sad. Sansa thought that she should have been sent to a Southron boarding school years ago, but Mother could not bear to have her first daughter so far away. Although, it was not so very long now until she would be presented at court, and she would move away from Winterfell for good once that led to a marriage. A few months at a finishing school beforehand were nothing really. Then why did she feel so homesick?

She had been so excited to look around the Old Keep on that first visit. So thrilled that Cersei Lannister herself had encouraged her father to let her attend. So happy that the lady was certain that her accent could be fixed. And then there had been her son, Joffrey…

Sansa shook her head slightly. It was not proper of her to think of Joffrey Baratheon in such a way. Yes, his golden curls had caught her eye when she had come for the tour. But he was the son of Lord Baratheon, the speaker in the House of Lords! He was not some young buck she should be considering in such a manner! She ran her hands over her long plain black skirt to brush out imagined creases.

Through the increasing haze of the rain a grey stone building caught her eye, and given the increasing noise of the dogs, she could only conclude that these were the kennels of the Keep. She paused, hesitating, her nerve deserting her. But she was a Stark and the Starks had fought back the wildmen of the North long before Hadrian had built the wall! And besides, she wanted to see the dogs.

She found them in a pen in the muddy stone courtyard of the kennels. Oh but my, they were large beasts! There was a mastiff, a wolfhound and a Rottweiler. But as she got close the sweet boys leapt happily for her, bashing against the stone wall of the pen, and trying to lick at her outstretched hand. She spent a happy few moments greeting them one by one, thinking of poor Lady, left back in Winterfell.

“Careful there!” 

She turned at the sudden shout, and her ankle went from beneath her. She fell heavily onto the cobblestones. The stones that lay beneath a thick crust of sodden mud. 

“Oh no!” She wailed, seeing the mud all over her plain black school skirt. She quickly looked over her white high necked blouse but could see no splashes there, thankfully.

A large dark shadow fell over her. She looked up at the man who’d shouted and gasped. Half his face was a terrible mess of scars... burns.

“You shouldn’t bloody well be here!” He grabbed at her arm and lifted her to her feet with ease. She stepped back from him, indignant that he’d manhandled her so, and that he’d dared curse at her! 

But he was already glaring at her from underneath his peaked cap. She took in the shotgun over his shoulder, his ragged hunting tweeds. He must be the groundskeeper. The man with the lamp in the night.

“You girls ain’t fucking allowed down here!”

She gasped. She’d never heard anyone use that word before! Not even her father, and he had stood shoulder to shoulder with his household soldiers during the wars in Africa!

He leant closer to her. “If you don’t like my fucking language, stay out of my fucking kennels!”

The man… the man smelt of alcohol as well. She went to march past him imperiously, but pain flared from her ankle and she cried out.

“What the fuck?!” Was he just saying that word now just because she’d reacted to it?! She felt dizzy as the pain affected her wits.

Before she had the time to protest the man was on his knee, in the mud, crouching down to look, using his large hands to gently, more gently than she’d thought a brute like him would be capable of, to gently assess her ankle. She went bright red.

“Sir… sir… that is not proper!”

“I am no bloody sir!” He growled. “And if you think I’m some bloody rooky to be het up by some chit of a girl’s ankle… well, it takes more than that to get this old dog going!” 

She wasn’t certain she could go much redder. And then he picked her up, literally chucking her over his free shoulder and striding with her as though she was a bag of flour! She hammered fists on his back but he just laughed.

“Still yourself, girl!” He carried her that way up a stone staircase, pushing open a wooden door that lead into a simple set of rooms overlooking the courtyard. He put her down in a threadbare old armchair, not ungently. But as her hair resettled around her shoulders she glared at him.

“You can’t… you can’t!” 

“I can and I did.” 

He moved about the basic and bare stone walled rooms, setting down his gun and removing his cap. Underneath it his hair was in a style she had never actually seen before, long and held back by a leather thong like he was some kind of native she’d heard about in the tales of the Americas. He released it quickly though, letting the strands of it fall over his scarred face a little. Was he ashamed? 

Dark grey eyes considered her.

“Take your skirt off.”

“I will not!” She shouted back, holding tightly onto the arms of the chair for support. Heavens! Did he want to… was this…?

“Take it off, or I come over there and take it off you my fucking self!” He was doing it again, riling her. “You’ve got those things underneath, haven’t you? Those other skirts and things…”

“Petticoats?” 

He nodded, and she almost thought he looked embarrassed. This man who said ankles didn’t excite him.

“Aye, I have them on, underneath.” She bit her tongue for letting the North slip into her voice.

“Then it would take a very bloody patient man to get through all of those bloody layers to get at you. And I am not a patient man! Take your skirt off. You’re safe enough from me, girl.”

She stood cautiously, using the chair to get up so as not to put weight on her ankle. The skirt, a dowdy black thing given to her when she started at the school, was easily undone and let to drop to the stone floor of this cold little home. She stepped out of it, very painfully aware that her petticoats were the fine cotton ones she’d embroidered with winter roses herself. She saw his eyes on them, but then he was sweeping down to grab her skirt and to fling it over his shoulder as he’d done with her just moments before. He disappeared into another darkened room off the lounge and returned with a metal washtub, full of soapy water. 

“You’re bloody fortunate I was but part way through my washing when I heard the dogs greeting you.”

“You… you can’t.”

“Fond of saying that, aint you miss?” He laughed darkly as he sat at a low wooden chair and started to scrub her skirt over the washboard.

“But you’re a man!”

“That I am. Sit girl, I’ll be a little while.”

She did as she was told, folding her anxious hands into her lap. On her petticoats.

“But men… men don’t…” 

“Do you see any maids here? In the big house I bet you’ve got serving girls a-plenty at your beck and call. But not here. Here, I care for myself.”

She blushed a little. She’d never had to wash her own things. Even here, where she slept in threadbare sheets and ate cheap cuts of meat, even here the school didn’t expect her to wash her own things. She watched his large hands pushing at the black material, the water darkening as the mud fled from his strength. 

“But its going to be wet.” 

“The rain’s getting heavier. You were caught out in it is all. Better a wet skirt than them thinking you’ve been wrestling in the mud with a dog.” He looked up at her then, something wicked in his eyes. Was he being crude? 

But she wasn’t crude, she had manners.

“Thank you. This is very kind of you.” 

He laughed, a short barking laugh. “Kind? We aint properly acquainted if you think that, miss.”

She blushed, scolding herself for thinking she had manners when she hadn’t even introduced herself to him!

“I am Sansa Stark, of Winterfell, daughter of Lord Eddard Stark.” 

He nodded, thoughtful. “The hero of the Anglo-Ashanti War? Heard of him in the war reports.”

“He doesn’t like to be called that. He doesn’t like to talk about the wars much at all.”

“Not many do.”

“Is that where you… your…” She reddened as she looked at his face. His eyes darkened.

“My scars? No, girl. I’ve fought for King and Country, but I got these somewhere else.” He paused, unwilling to continue.

He wrung out the skirt with powerful hands, spreading it out to consider it. “I’ll hang it with my stuff in the scullery for a bit.”

“Thank you.” He returned from his errand and sat again in the chair, looking boldly at her. She blushed under his blunt consideration of her.

“Never seen one of the pretty-maids-all-in-row up close before.” He leant back in the chair. “I’m not allowed up to the big house. I can see why now if they’re all as fair as you, girl.”

She fidgeted, starting to panic again.

“Please… please don’t talk like that!”

“Why not? I see a pretty girl, why should I pretend I don’t?”

“It’s not… appropriate!” 

“There’s nothing appropriate about me.” He leant forward, a devilish look on his face. “Out of curiosity, just how patient would a man have to be, would you say… to get under all those skirts?”

She placed a hand over her mouth in shock. 

“Scared of me girl?”

“Aye. I mean, yes!” 

He laughed loudly, and she just sat there looking at him, blinking like an owl in the sunlight.

“There it is! I knew it!” He smiled at her. “There’s the North in you! Saw you trying to hide it, trying to sound like Cersei fucking Lannister. But when you’re riled up it sneaks out doesn’t it!?”

“It does not!” But she could hear it even as she protested.

“There’s heather and fucking bagpipes in your voice girl.”

“I’m from south of the Wall!” 

“You might be, but your voice wants to sing ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’” He held up his hands, still red from scrubbing her skirt, as she went to deny it. “I like it well enough. You sound like a little bird singing when you let it out.”

She paused. “And where are you from? And does your voice want to introduce yourself properly to a lady?!” She was a little shocked by herself to be honest, but maintained the froideur of her face. 

He frowned. “From hereabouts. Nowhere special. And you can call me Sandor.”

“Just Sandor? No family name?”

“No.” His voice was firm. 

“Pleased to meet you Sandor.” 

“You aint, not really.” He looked up at a large wooden dresser where cups and plates sat in higgledy piles. “I should be offering you a warming cup of bloody tea, shouldn’t I?”

Sansa was about to protest, again. But actually tea sounded lovely. Even if it came with a curse word before it

“Yes please. Thank you. That would be lovely.”

“’Yes please. Thank you. That would be lovely’” He mocked her. “Is that nonsense what they teach you at this fucking school?”

He moved to the hearth, crouching down to set the wood and to rest a kettle over it. She noticed something odd. When he lit the taper, he kept well back from the flames. 

Perhaps… the burns on his face… some accident? She was too polite to ask, of course.

But as he stood he caught her eyes on him. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a metal flask, never taking his eyes from hers. “I’ll be having my tea ‘irished’ up. Would my lady care for the same? Or should that be ‘scotched up’ for my lady of the North?”

She instinctively went to say no. A lady did not drink strong spirits. A lady might partake of a sweet sherry after dinner, when playing parlour games with other suitable ladies. But that was Lady Cersei’s voice in her mind.

“Yes… please.” She said in a quiet voice, surprising herself.

He smiled darkly at her, and then turned to fetch them some mismatching cups.

Oh heavens! What was she getting herself into now?


	2. Chapter 2

“The rain in Spain falls… where the fuck does it fucking fall again?!”

“Mainly on the plain!” She giggled, twisting one stocking clad foot behind the other. Since she’d removed her constrictive ankle boots she’d been fighting the urge to curl up in his big high backed armchair and to rest her head against the soft faded cloth of its wings. There was a coarse looking blanket nearby. He could lay that over her, and she could sleep here. Just for a little while.

“Buggering nonsense!” he was still leaning back in his rickety old wooden chair, an arm resting on the roughhewn table, fingertips dawdling around his tea cup there. 

How many cups had she had? The first few had had some tea in them, hadn’t they, even if he’d ‘scotched’ them up for her? She peered down at the small cracked cup in her lap with suspicion. Was that entirely tea in there, or mostly something stronger now?

“Don’t see how twisting your mouth around that shitting nonsense helps with fuck all.” He frowned, staring into his own cup. Now that she’d got past her initial, and very impolite, shock at his scars she was able to look at this crude man properly. His frown was drawn by thick and dark eyebrows over a sharp edged face and a large-ish crooked nose. But there were sloping sad lines to it as well. As though his life had brought him little but disappointment. And yet, when he had been trying to rile her earlier, the wolfish smile he’d shown her had illuminated those dark eyes and made the darkness in him lift for a moment, even if he still hid behind some of that unusual long hair. Her fingers itched to tie it back again for him-

But that was improper! She straightened her back again, pushing the thought from her mind, and his frown deepened.

“I wasn’t having a bloody go!” He glared at her with those deep grey eyes as he misunderstood her action. “You want to waste your time on tongue twisters-”

“I want to improve the way I speak-”

“Apart from the little bit of slurring that’s crept onto your tongue along with my tea there ain’t nothing fucking wrong with the way you speak, little bird.” He stared at her, and she felt that darned heat creeping up her neck again. Just as it had done when he’d mentioned getting under her skirts. She should have left. She should have left a long time ago…

She tried hard to clip her words the next time she spoke. Slurring indeed! “My accent is not considered fashionable at court.”

“Court? You in trouble with the coppers?!” He seemed very surprised. How dare he! She could if she wanted to be! Not that she ever would be, of course!

“Oh no! I meant the royal court! I am to be presented at court in a few months. To the King. And then I will do the season…”

He looked blank.

“The season? In London?”

The frown deepened on his face. “What the fuck is that?!”

“The social season. When the best families reside in town and attend all the balls, and parties and-” She got caught up in the moment, thinking about the excitement of it all, and didn’t notice the look that crossed his face.

“Ah, all the fucking ‘best families’. That’ll be why I never heard of the damned thing before. Not being from one of the ‘best families’!”

Then he drank straight from the opened bottle of golden spirits he’d brought out from a warped wooden cabinet when they’d finished his small steel hip flask. Some time ago now.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.” Her voice was small, and she looked down at her hands, finding herself twining her fingers together. “I’m just excited. I’ve never been to London before.” 

He rubbed a hand over the bristles on his chin, avoiding touching the scars she noticed. He took another deep drink from the bottle, before leaning forward to tip it towards her tea cup. She almost went to hover her hand over it, to prevent him, but the spreading warmth of the golden liquid was seductive and she let him pour it for her.

“So… balls and parties.” He nodded at her. “Your family like that kind of shit do they?”

“Well. Not really. But I’m going on my own.”

“On your own in London? Bugger that girl! Some dastardly old rogue’ll give you strong liquor and take advantage of you before you can say ‘the rain in fucking Spain falls on the plain’!” 

Was there a shadow of a smile on his face as he talked of a stranger giving her strong liquor? Not that he’d tried to take advantage of her. Yet, a dark voice whispered in her mind. 

She smiled a sweet smile, deciding to pretend he was speaking out of concern for her, and not out of lewdness. “Oh, do not worry. I will be staying with an old friend of my mother’s. Petyr Baelish, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.”

Any shadow of a smile departed. “A pretty girl like you staying with a god damned politician!” 

She blushed at his unintentional compliment, but ploughed on past it. “Oh, it’s quite proper! He has an old maiden aunt who’ll act as chaperone while I am staying in his Mayfair townhouse.”

“Let me guess. An old maiden aunt who turns out to be bed bound and deafer than a fucking post.” He set down the bottle with loud bang. “And why exactly are your fucking family sending the lamb into the lion’s den?! Parties, and balls and-” He stopped, as though something had struck him. “They want you to make a match!”

“Of course!” She was surprised he had not already realised. But then, he was just a groundskeeper. And one that was kept away from the ‘big house’, as he had put it. Perhaps he had not truly realised what the ladies there were being prepared for. “Being presented means-”

“Means that they’re ready to make a deal for you! To sell you off like you’re just some sort of beast just to be bred from!”

She put her tea cup on the arm of the chair and stood up, pushing away at the creases of her petticoats. “I think I would like my skirt back now.” She tried to keep her voice steady, her posture perfect, but still she wobbled a little. It was quite the feat getting her boots back on and lacing them up, but she managed it.

The man seemed about to say something else, but held his tongue. That was wise. She was an inch away from speaking quite firmly to him! What did he know about such things!? What could a groundskeeper possibly know of such things!!

He stood quickly, the legs of the wooden chair screeching harshly against the stone tiles of the cold plain room. He went through to the other room, the scullery as he’d called it, returning with the still sodden skirt. She half turned from him as she quickly drew it up over her white cotton under things. But she noticed that he had looked away anyway.

“Thank you for your help this afternoon. The tea has been quite… medicinal.” She was furious, but she could not leave without the proper attention to courtesies. And to be fair, the spirits had improved the pain in her ankle immensely, even if they had caused her to wobble slightly now. 

Sandor looked down at her with those dark eyes, and she was suddenly hugely aware of how much taller her was. How very much broader. Under the ragged tweeds he was a giant of a man. But it was a very gentle hand that touched her shoulder, and her eyes were drawn to the callouses on the fingertips and the thick dark hair on the back of it.

“I’m not one for apologies. Never been many about worth apologising to. But for this I am sorry, little bird. Its none of my fucking business.” His face was full of consternation, he seemed to truly mean it.

Her mouth opened in surprise. But before she could say anything a stranger noise broke the silence between them. It sounded like a duck call perhaps, if the duck was being strangled at the same time.

“Fuck. He’s back. He’ll be tearing up the grounds again showing off that damned thing of his to the ladies.” Whatever softness had been in Sandor’s face had vanished and he withdrew his hand. “You’d best be going, as you said. If the maids gather to gape at his metal contraption, you’ll be missed.”

“I don’t understand?”

“It’s the little lord. Joffrey. In that damned contraption, that 'automobile'.” Sandor growled the words out. 

Sansa nodded, thinking of those golden curls. How strange it was then that the next words from her mouth were not about Joffrey, nor his automobile?! Sansa blamed the strong liquor for making her so forward.

“Can I… can I come and visit the dogs again?” 

He seemed distracted. “What was that?” 

“I wonder, please, might I visit the dogs again? I have a dog at home, and saying hello to them helped ease my homesickness.”

There was that dark smile again, the wicked look on his face as cutting replies occurred to him. “I bet you have one of those little white balls of fluff that is good for nothing but sitting on your lap, eating treats and getting fat.” 

She drew herself up. “Actually, she’s an Alaskan Malamute. She was a gift from my father when he came back from a prospecting expedition in the wilds there. And if she sat on my lap she’d squash me flat!”

“Is that so?” He considered her closely. “And what’s this beast called?”

Sansa paused, and reluctantly whispered the name. “Lady.”

He laughed. A full on belly laugh, deep and booming, his eyes closing as humour took him. And she found herself laughing with him.

“Of course she fucking is!” He regained himself and smiled down at her. But then the smile was wiped from his face, like a ray of sunlight caught between rain clouds. “Best you go. You shouldn’t be seen here with the dogs. Any of them.” 

“Why… why do you call yourself that?” She looked up at that crooked face again, seeing the scars but not minding them so very much at all. It was a strong face, a distinctive face. As different to Joffrey’s as the storm was to the sun, even if sometimes the light shone through him too. Perhaps the spirits she’d consumed were playing with her wits! Such heady thoughts!

“Her at the big house bought the dogs to guard this place. Bought me too. She has me and them watch over you lovely little flowers. I see no great difference between me and the dogs. We’ll both tear into any man who tries…” He paused but his eyes bored into her own. “I shouldn’t be saying any of this.” Was he standing closer than he had been? Hadn’t she been leaving? She felt herself sway and wobble, or was that the room?

“But if any fucking cunt got over that wall again and got to you like they did with-!” He stopped himself again. “Though how they fucking did it last time-?! If I’d been fucking working here then it’d never have happened…” He shook his head. “Best you go. I’ve drunk too much. Saying things I oughtn’t.”

She nodded, his words swirling around her head as she bobbed him a small curtsy. That seemed to break his dark mood for a moment, but then she was walking past him. She was leaving him behind in those few cold stone rooms, rushing past the dogs who bounded over to greet her in their stone pen. But she was gone, running in a thoroughly unladylike way back to the Old Keep. Where Joffrey’s shiny silver automobile was waiting.


	3. Chapter 3

She barely breathed the whole time she was skirting shadows on her way back to the dorms.  Her excuses were ready on her lips, but she was certain if anyone had stopped her that they’d betray her, and slur her previously thought out words about the ‘downpour’ she’d been caught in.  And what if she smelt of the liquor he’d given her?  What if she smelt of his hearth and of his tea she’d enjoyed?

But she made it safe and sound to the long room, dipping under the beams that criss-crossed it as she made her way to her bed and to her trunk.  She had another skirt, but it was in a dark grey instead of the black the others would be wearing.  Perhaps she should stay up here until she was missed?  But that might raise greater suspicion than admitting that she’d had to change her clothes because of the rain.  She ran a thick toothed comb through her hair and braided it into a long plait.  Once she was ‘out’ she’d start to wear more adult styles like Lady Cersei, combing and twisting it into a woman’s crown of hair, full of metal pins and perhaps adorned with little hats and bejewelled feathers.  Tasteful ones of course.

As she sat on the end of her bed and let her quick fingers work through the long red silk of her tresses she thought of his hair, the dark length of it that had fallen across his face as he’d set the fire for the tea.  She’d never seen long hair on a man before.  She wondered if it was soft like hers, or coarse.  Like his language! Heavens, but he liked to swear!  But a smile flitted across her lips as she remembered his crudeness…

Lady Sansa Stark, you stop that immediately! She snapped at herself, her mental voice sounding a lot like Miss Mordane’s. She stood quickly, but then near reeled as a wave of nausea turned her stomach over.  Perhaps she should lie down.  Just for a moment…

No!   

She marched herself from the attic, and took the main stairs this time, passing the dusty old dorms that were not currently in use by students, their doors hanging carelessly open, wind whistling in through their windows and disturbing cobwebs.  Sansa got the impression that the school had once been much, much fuller.  Well, it could be in part because of the rather poor food they were given.  Sansa’s stomach both churned and rumbled at the memory of the solid jam roly poly that had finished last night’s repast. 

She was still holding back waves of sickness as she found herself walking past the closed door to Cersei’s parlour on the first floor of the Keep.  A man’s voice made her stop in her tracks, and against all propriety, she found herself loitering by the door, idly looking over a large emerald green fiscus in an Indian coloured pot as she listened in.

“When is he arriving?”

That wasn’t Joffrey who had a lighter, gayer voice.  This was a man of years beyond Joffrey’s.  But not the groundskeeper, whose deep rasping voice she would have known instantly.

“The telegram said tomorrow! Were you not listening to me?!” The snippy female voice was Lady Cersei’s, but Sansa had never heard her sound anything more than languorous and elegant.

“Why now?”  Whoever this man was he sounded tense.

“They asked for more…”

There was a silence.

“I didn’t have any more to give them! Enrollments were falling anyway, even before the little bitch starting blabbing to Scotland Yard.  Scotland Yard, Jaime!” That was Cersei again, and Sansa almost gasped at hearing her swear.  But who was Jaime? And what had someone told the Police?

“What about Robert?”

“What about him?!”

“Surely he doesn’t want the scandal? He has his position in the House of Lords to think of.”

“Ah yes, but he’s found another musical hall girl to lie his great bulk on, hasn’t he.  Says its love this time.  She’s probably carrying another of his bloody whelps by now.   He couldn’t care less about what happens to me and this school when he’s got stars in his eyes and a woman’s legs about his waist!”

Sansa held a hand to her mouth, not certain if it was a shocked horror bubbling in her or the sickness.  The celebrated Lady Cersei was terribly… crude!

“Would he… divorce you?” There was a weird note of hope in the question.  Was this Lady Cersei’s lover?  Well, that little detail certainly wasn’t advertised in the school’s page in the Lady either!

“Oh brother mine, let’s deal with one disaster at a time!”

So not a lover then.  Sansa was thankful for small mercies! A foul mouthed headmistress was one thing, but a lover would cast a pall on the finishing of all the ladies passing through her school! And, she really could not judge the poor woman for her cursing, having spent much of the afternoon with the groundkeeper and not judged him for his.  She had even found herself smiling at the times he’d tried to shock her with it.

“I see no disaster.  So this Selmy comes here tomorrow.  He pokes about a bit.  There’s no evidence either way for him to find.  Even if it does make it to the presses… you point out your increased security, the money you have spent on protecting the little ladies.  It will all blow over.  Trust me.”

A few moments passed of silence, and Sansa wondered if they had stopped talking for some particular reason.  But then she heard Lady Cersei again.

“Of course… there is that other option.  If we need it.”

“Only if we need it, sweet sister.  Now, how is Joffrey’s new toy?”

“Expensive.  Bloody expensive!  We could have used that money, Jaime!”

“We must keep up appearances.”

“Don’t I know it?!”

She wanted to stay and listen, and simultaneously hated herself for the impulse, but the churning in her stomach was overriding her curiosity.  The poor fiscus did not deserve the fate that she feared was heading for it! She quickly stepped away from the potted plant and tiptoed away down the hall.  She had just turned the corner, heading to the simpler parlour the girls would be embroidering in when she walked right into a smiling blonde haired young man wearing smart golfing clothes.  Joffrey!

“Watch where you’re- oh, many pardons my lady, I thought you were a serving girl for a moment!” He stepped back from her and bowed in a louche manner.  Sansa remembered her manners and bobbed a curtsey.

“Lord Baratheon!”

“Come now, what is the sour Miss Mordane teaching you! My father would be Lord Baratheon.  I am Lord Joffrey!”

Sansa blushed, she knew that, of course.  She had known since she was very small how the proper naming of lords and ladies went!

“But that is not quite right is it? Perhaps you should call me Joff as my friends do?”  He gave her a smile, but it was too quick somehow, as though he was more practiced in smiling than in the feeling of a smile.

“If it please you, Lord Joffrey.”

“You are the Stark girl are you not? Well, the Starks are a grand old family, wealthy too.   We are equals I feel.  So might I call you Sansa?”

Sansa nodded, holding her lips tight against the sickness that was crescendoing in her stomach. 

“Are you quite well, Sansa?” He looked closely at her, and for a moment she felt like a bug under one of her brother Bran’s lenses. “You seem to be quite pale.”

“Forgive me… Joff.  But I am not all that well.  I might go and lie down for a little while before dinner.”

“Oh that is a shame.  We are having tea in the ladies’ parlour soon-”

The mention of tea nearly sent her over the edge, but she gritted her teeth and dug her nails into her palms.

“Thank you, but I think I shall go to the dorms.”

“Might I escort you?” He leant forward and whispered conspiratorially, and Sansa was hit by a waft of what she thought might be that new thing for men, cologne. “Now, I am not really allowed up in the dorms, but I would like to see you settled and comfortable.  And I know the back way up there through the servants’ quarters so we might not be seen…?”

“Ah no, thank you.  Good bye!” She turned tail quickly and ran back the way she had come, holding a hand over her mouth, tears springing to her eyes.  She imagined that she’d left a bemused Joff behind her, perplexed over her lack of manners and civility.  She would be certain to apologise profusely another time! But she made it back to the dorm without incident, and after undressing she lay on her bed, finding some relief in it, even if the bed itself simply refused to lie still!  Never again would she drink ‘scotched up’ tea!  But as the room darkened and the other ladies prepared for bed around her, she found herself thinking of the coarse groundskeeper again.  In the shadows of the attic she saw the greyness of his eyes, the darkness of his hair. Heavens, she even found herself thinking of his suggestion of getting under her skirts! She tried to push that thought away with thoughts of promenading with Lord Joffrey…  ‘Joff’… taking in the air in Regent’s Park, and making polite conversation as he held out an elegantly suited arm for her and she held a brightly coloured sun shade over her fair skin. But the groundskeeper’s arm was the one she imagined, her gloved hand lying over those old tweeds, resting on his muscles under the cloth.  He was a man of the land, no doubt his vigorous seeming health was kept by regular exercise and long walks with his dogs in the fresh air.  Perhaps he even boxed as she understood some commonfolk did.  He would strip down to his waist and… oh my!

She screwed her eyes tightly closed.  But when the room was pitch black, and the gossiping of the girls had subsided into slight snoring, she found herself kneeling on her bed again, looking through that small attic window out into the night, peering about for his lamp light.  She saw it eventually, wending its jigging path across the estate.  What was it he was protecting them from? What had happened here? Who had gotten over the wall and what had they done? And what had Lady Cersei been discussing with her brother, hidden away in her forbidden parlour?  What scandal was about to fall on the school?!  She finally fell asleep, but with questions still churning through her mind.

The next morning she found herself walking the estate again, her footsteps taking her a different way this time.  She was dying to find the groundskeeper and to interrogate him since he seemed to know more than he was letting on. But the throbbing in her head, the dryness of her mouth and the sickness that would not leave her belly made her wary of seeing him again.  He would either mock her, or tie her in a muddle that she could not tolerate this day.  And yet… she could have stayed indoors today, couldn’t she, she could have stayed where he was not allowed to go?

So when she did come across him, in the small copse of trees at the back of the Keep, she was only mildly surprised, but more than a little disappointed in herself.  However, when she saw what he was about, her spirits were lifted and her headaches forgotten.

He was in the midst of a tumble of dogs, the three great beasts rolling over the man as he laughed, their tongues lolling as they joined him into their fun.  His tweeds were mud stained, but he seemed not to care, nor that his drawn back hair was being ripped from the leather thong and falling over his face.  She stood for a moment, almost out of sight between the trees, not certain if she wanted to interrupt this moment for him.  But then the dogs decided it for her and bounded towards her, leaping up as one and pushing her to the ground as well!

“Oh bother!” She exclaimed; looking over the mud stained skirt he had only washed the day before.  Washed for her, to help her.

“Little bird!” He strode over to her.  “How many times do you need to be told not to wander about?!”

He grabbed at her hand without request, and pulled her to her feet and then… close to him.

“There are bad men in this world.  Men who do bad things to little girls in the woods!” His face was inches from hers.  “When will you learn?!”

She found herself backing away, until the bark of a tree pressed against her. “I… I…”

“Maybe I’m a bad man! Maybe I’ll get through those skirts like I said I might!”

She felt his large hand on her thigh, gathering the material there, pulling at it, bringing it up.  She trembled but from somewhere defiance sprang out from her.

“You’ll no’hurt me!” Her accent was in full effect as she shouted up at him.

“No, little bird, I’ll not hurt you.” His eyes were soft again, and his voice was small, too small for a large man such as him.  Then he started to pull away from her, began to let go of her skirts.  But it wasn’t quick enough.

“Ahem.” Came the polite noise.  Polite, but with the edge of sternness in it.

They looked as one at the older man with the snow white moustache.  Sansa almost laughed, he looked like one of those drawings of the walrus from Alice’s Adventures. But then she saw the serious look on his face, and realised how this must look to him.  But before she could say anything he introduced himself.

“I am Selmy.  Selmy of Scotland Yard.” Then Sansa noticed the walking stick sword he held raised in his right hand. “Are you in peril, Miss?”


	4. Chapter 4

She watched Selmy’s light blue eyes considering her.  They flicked quickly from where she had put herself in front of Sandor and then up to where his face loomed above hers in the shadows of the trees.  She knew how it must have looked to the old detective, knew he had taken in her disarray and come to certain conclusions.  Conclusions that could be very harmful to her and the groundskeeper alike if they were spread about widely.

“And the dogs…?” Selmy looked about.  The blighters were nowhere to be seen, of course.

“Three of them.  A mastiff, a wolfhound and a Rottweiler.” She drew herself up, drawing on the rigidity of her corset to steel her.  “I do hope you are not questioning my account? I am Lady Sansa Stark, daughter of Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, and I will not have my honour impugned by a… _policeman!_ ” There was a little of her mother in the voice that she used, and a little of her father’s warnings about how petty lordlings behaved in the South when they encountered the commonfolk.  Well, let him think her to be some self-entitled and grandoise Lady, if it helped Sandor.

“No, I have it now.  The dogs felled you and this man here helped you up again.” There was a flatness in his voice, a dullness of tone that he probably often made use of when dealing with his ‘betters’. 

“Sandor was very helpful!” Sansa bit her tongue, she should have left things well alone.  But that tone bothered her!

“Sandor is it?” The man in the bowler hat rested his walking stick against his leg and drew out a small black notebook. He licked a finger and flicked through it. “Sandor Clegane? The-”

“The groundskeeper.” Sandor’s voice behind her was curt, abrupt.   Sansa noted his full name however.  Sandor Clegane.  Clegane?  Why was that family name familiar?

“Groundskeeper? But, I have it here-”

“The groundskeeper.  Hired by Lady Lannister.”

“But you weren’t always the groundskeeper?”

“No.”  What was going on here?  Why was Selmy prodding and poking at the larger man?

“What did you do before Lady Lannister hired you?”

“Drank.  Mostly.”

A small smile emerged from underneath those white whiskers.  “Indeed.  I heard your name in the local pub.  The Three Dogs?”

“Yes.” He really wasn’t giving anything away!

“The men who drink there say-”

“Too fucking much most like.”

“Mr Clegane! There is a lady present!” Selmy was deeply shocked.  “Perhaps… perhaps I should escort you back to the house before I ask Mr Clegane any more questions?”

She was about to answer when Sandor stepped forward, placing himself next to her instead of behind her as he had been when she had moved forward to protect him.  That was almost humorous now she thought on it. _Her_ , protect _him_?!

“No.  She should hear.  She should know what’s going on here.”

“But she is a Lady!” Selmy was aghast.

“All the more reason.”

Selmy harrumphed, and flicked back through his notebook again. “On the night of the twenty-sixth of July a man, unknown, entered the grounds of the Old Keep, and made his way to the ladies’ dorms.  We do not know how he scaled the walls, which are fifteen foot high by my reckoning.  Nor, indeed, how he got into the locked house.  The housekeeper has already provided a statement as to her nightly routine of checking and locking the doors.” Selmy looked embarrassed, his eyes looking to Sansa with concern, before continuing. “He found his way to the ladies dorms, avoiding detection, and proceeded to seriously assault Lady Marella Maton in an empty attic room.”

Sansa gasped.

“Why are you here now, Selmy?” Sandor growled. “Whoever he was he’s most like long gone!”

“It wasn’t reported to the Yard until recently.  How long have you worked here Mr Clegane?”

“I was hired a month after it happened.  Hired so that it wouldn’t bloody well happen again!”

Selmy nodded, scratching notes into his little notebook with a stump of a pencil.

“But you grew up hereabouts?  You knew the house before you were employed by it?”

“I knew it.”

A silence fell between the two men, a thick silence. The older, balding man, held the larger man’s gaze, unwavering.

“What do you think of the men you drink with at The Three Dogs, Mr Clegane?  Could any of them done this terrible thing?”

Sandor paused, as though the question threw him for a moment. “I don’t drink _with_ them, Mr Selmy.”

“Even so..?”

“They’re drunks, gamblers, poachers.  But rapers? I don’t think so.”

Selmy nodded.  Sansa felt the world shifting around her.  Criminals!  Criminals just on the other side of the wall in the small pretty little village the chauffeur had brought her through on the way to the school. 

“And you, Mr Clegane?” The question was posed lightly, as though of little consequence.  She felt Sandor tense beside her, and risked a look up at his face.  She had never seen him this angry before, the rage flowing from him.

“He is not a raper, Mr Selmy! I will vouch for him!” Sansa spoke out before she had thought through how her words might be taken. But Selmy just nodded and wrote more of his spidery notes in his little book.

“I knew your father, Lady Sansa.  Fought with him a few times.  Not that he’d remember a simple infantryman like me.  Good man.  Honest.  And brave.  Seems to me his daughter is much alike to him.  Would you allow me to escort you to the house now, m’lady?” He offered her his arm.  But Sansa shook her head.

“I would like to stay and speak with Mr Clegane some more.”

“Of course. Good day.” He doffed his bowler hat.  To them both, Sansa noted.  And then he was off on his way, swinging his walking stick and whistling some musical hall tune.

“Sansa…” His voice was deep, a warning.

“Wait.” She placed a hand on his arm to quiet him as she watched the departing figure of Selmy, making sure he was well away.

“You shouldn’t speak out for me! Do you know what you are risking?!”

“My name? Well, there’s no risk as you obviously weren’t involved in this horrible incident!”

“It’s not just that! Being seen with me.  Staying back to speak with me.  Touching me.” He looked down at the small hand she had left on his arm.  She looked also.

He looked uncomfortable.  “Before, when I grabbed at you, I just wanted to scare some sense into you.  You do know that, don’t you girl?”

“I know it.” She looked up at him, taking in the sternness of his face, the wisps of hair she so wanted to tidy back into their leather thong.  “As I said, you’ll not hurt me.” 

“You said it in a more Northern way than that… lass.” He gave the last word a Scottish lilt.  She found herself smiling, even after hearing the horrible truth from Selmy.  Was that what Lady Cersei had been discussing with her brother? Had the Maton family received money from the Lannisters to stay silent and then gone to the police when it had dried up? How bad were the Lannister finances now?  Yet more damned questions!  She blushed a little as she thought the curse word.

He was looking intently at her.  “I’ve never seen a girl blush as much as you before, little bird.”

The blushing intensified. “Oh!”

“I like it.  I like you if I’m fucking honest about it.”

His forwardness shocked her.  It was completely improper.

And it made her head spin. 

“Doesn’t mean that I intend to do anything about it, _Lady_ Sansa, so don’t you fret.” He sounded angry again.  So, so angry. 

Sansa knew she should have snapped at him with sharp and terse words.  She knew she should have walked away, sweeping her skirts about to show her strong and complete disproval! She knew she should go immediately to Lady Cersei as her de facto guardian and tell her exactly how improper her servant had been to her!  She certainly shouldn’t have moved the hand resting on his arm and then lain it against the ragged lapel of his tweed jacket, placing it over his heart.

When his rough hand covered hers, her own heart near stopped.   The softness she’d seen in him when he’d let her go before Selmy had seen them was there again.

“You need to get back to the house, little bird.” He spoke low.  Low and soft.

“Might I… might I come visit for afternoon tea again soon?”

He paused, struggling with something.

“No.”  He said with a note of finality.

He removed her hand and gave her a stiff, formal bow.  It was odd indeed to see the gruff and crude groundskeeper attempt such a courtesy, and for a brief moment Sansa was distracted by the strangeness of it. But then she had the time to dwell on his response.  And something in her chest hurt quite severely.

He strode off without a backwards glance, and she watched him disappear between the trees, the three dogs joining him and harrying his footsteps.


	5. Chapter 5

Sansa sat stiffly at the pianoforte, but poured her feelings into it through her fingers.  The simple rise and fall of the scales was enough, the simplicity of the notes in the minor keys reflecting the morose shade her days had taken since she had crossed his path in the small copse of trees behind the Old Keep.  Nights had also passed, and she had knelt on her bed again and again to see his small lamp light criss-crossing the grounds, the dogs barking out their warnings in the dark. Once or twice she’d had the ridiculous fancy of charging past the locked doors and running down to him in the blackness, her nightdress billowing behind her as her bare feet raced across the night chilled grass.  But what would she do when she reached him? What would _he_ do?! The thought of impropriety raised another blush to her face, and every night she had sunk back down to her bed and pulled the thin sheets tight up against her chin, her skin alive with the thought of a man’s touch.  A _groundskeeper’s_ touch!

By day she was a proper lady.  A proper student.  She worked harder than ever on her elocution lessons, even as his voice echoed in her head.  _“You said it in a more Northern way than that… lass.”_ She took tea with the other ladies, learning about the correct ways of opening up conversations on trifling matters of the day.  And then she remembered his tea, brewed in a coal black kettle on his simple fire, and his conversation, peppered with curse words no lady would ever say to her, no matter how close their intimacies might become.  She had begun to draw close to Lady Margaery.  But then one morning a stylish grey and black automobile emerging out of the morning fog to take her back to Highgarden somewhere in the west counties.  Margaery had sworn her never ending friendship, and that they would meet again in London when the season began.  But for all her breathy promises of being sisters now, the lady Tyrell would not say what had made her leave.

Sansa’s fingers moved heavier on the keys of the instrument.  She had the room to herself for as long as she wished.  This study was entirely ignored by the other ladies.  Oh, as accomplished ladies they all knew how to play, of course, but none but her seemed to actually enjoy it.  And the books on the shelves were dry little things about farming, four crop rotation and the like that no lady craving historical romances would consider as a diversion.  They were left over no doubt by the previous owners of the Old Keep before Lady Lannister had taken the house for her country retreat.  Away from Lord Baratheon, Sansa presumed, as she knew he had a Mayfair townhouse near Lord Baelish’s.  Her mother’s friend had dropped his name into the letters he sent Sansa.  Would the Lord Baratheon really divorce Lady Cersei?  The thought of it was so truly shocking!

She paused, the scales were perfect, but her melancholy was no longer satiated by them.  She remembered his words, that gruff voice of his. _“…your voice wants to sing ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’”_ he’d said. She did not know that song however.  But she drifted her fingertips over the keys until a tune she did know started to emerge. She opened her mouth, and sang softly.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,  
That saved a wretch like me.  
I once was lost but now am found,  
Was blind, but now I see.”

She paused, eyes lowered as she breathed the music in and out. 

Suddenly a movement caught her eye and she looked towards the French doors of the study, out to the rolling grass of the estates under the grey skies.  Was there… was there someone out there?  She felt her heart tremble, placing a hand against it, breathing fast against the constrictions of her corset.  And then the door to the study opened.

She gasped, but then saw the form of Joffrey there, still dressed in his golfing trews, as though he was just off for a round, patterned jumper and all.  But Sansa knew there were no courses nearby, and she wondered for a moment, a cynical side of her gaining air, whether he wore them just for some sort of effect.

“Forgive me! Please, forgive me if I startled you Sansa!” He moved quickly into the room, closing the door behind him, and before she had a chance to assure him she was well, he was sat next to her on the polished wood piano stool.

“I heard your delightful singing and I came to see what little bird was gracing us today.”

Sansa smiled faintly, but there was something disconcerting about the words ‘little bird’ on his lips.  Pale, fleshy lips that they were.

“Please, please do continue.” He smiled, and Sansa nodded, laying her fingers over the keys again. And she sang for him.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,  
That saved a wretch like me.  
I once was lost but now am found,  
Was blind, but now I see.”

“Lovely, simply lovely!”  He seemed to have moved closer, and Sansa found herself fidgeting at his nearness, her fingers jittering above the keys but not playing.  “I had hoped to come across you today.  My lady mother wondered if you might join us for afternoon tea.  In her parlour?”

The parlour, the forbidden parlour.  Sansa smiled warmly.  “I would be honoured.”

“Truth be told Sansa-  And I feel that I can trust you with the truth, is that not so?”

Sansa nodded.  She realised suddenly how much she craved the truth in this cold and shadowy old estate, now that she had heard just some of the secrets that were hidden within.

“Truth be told, I think my mother hopes that we will hit it off!” He laughed, but the sound made her uncomfortable.

“And I cannot say that I dislike the idea.” He was looking at her intently. “You are a very fine young lady.  Very fine.”

Sansa was reminded of the looks that the groundskeeper had given her.  But there was none of the sadness she felt from him moments after his eyes left her.  If anything Joffrey simply seemed arrogant.

“I would like to get to know you better, in a more intimate setting.”

“A more intimate setting. I do not understand?” A strange fear was building within her.  She wished he would leave and she could return to the simple repetition of the scales.

“My mother’s parlour of course! Oh Sansa, what did you think I meant?!” He was even closer, leaning his face towards hers.  She fought the urge to flee. “There are many other rooms here of course.  An old house like this is full to the brim with old forgotten rooms.  I could show you, if you like.  We could go exploring.  Would you like that, Sansa?”

The loud barking of a dog shattered the silence and Joffrey leapt away from her, looking over at the French doors where the groundskeeper’s wolfhound was scratching its claws against the glass, muddying it up and making an awful racket.  Sansa stood quickly as Joffrey backed away, fear obvious on his face.

“Bloody beast! It shouldn’t be here!” He bowed quickly. “Until afternoon tea, then?”

Sansa bobbed a quick curtsey, but Joffrey was already striding away in those ridiculous trousers of his, opening the door and slamming it behind him.  She let out a breath, and walked quickly to the French doors, twisting the iron wrought knob and letting the dog in.  It was followed quickly by its two friends, and Sansa found herself almost overwhelmed again by the mass of them, giggling as they kissed her face and brushed against the shelves, knocking books from them.

“Oh you clever boys!” She said, holding the mastiff’s face in her palms.  “You clever, clever boys!”

She planted a kiss of her own on its muzzle, just as a dark shadow fell across them.

“Sandor.” She said, smiling. There was no smile on his face however.

“Apologies, my lady.  They got away from me. I’ll take them back now…”

“No, wait.” Sansa stood quickly.  “Please, wait.”

But having asked him to stop, she did not truly know what she wanted from him.  She fell back on awkward pleasantries.

“Are you well?” She looked at him with cautious eyes as he stood there, barely looking at her.

“Well enough. Your skirt’s all muddy again.”

“That seems to be a habit of mine.”

“Heard you singing.” He said it so plainly, she did not know what to make of the comment.  But wait… if the dogs had gotten away from him, and only just charged in, how close had he been that he had heard her singing? He was not meant to come near the house at all! 

“Did you like it?”

“It was pretty enough I suppose.”

Sansa frowned, she did not expect flourishes of compliments, but _really_!

That dark smile touched his lips again, the twisted scars moving as his mouth showed his humour.  The dogs were still bounding about.  But then they were heading back out to the wide green outside.  Why did he not follow them?! She thought crossly.

“Did the little lady not bloody well hear what she wanted to hear?   Should I have said it was fucking ‘lovely’ instead?”

He had been listening in to her conversation with Joffrey!  Her anger flashed across her face, and she knelt to pick up the fallen books rather than look at his face any more.  But she paused as his large hand hovered over hers, as he knelt by her and looked at her intently.

“Curse me out girl! There’s a fierce anger there inside you.  Why not tell me I’m a buggering wretch for mocking you!?”

“A lady does not-”

“’A Lady does not’! And what does Sansa fucking Stark do?!”

She raised her hand to slap him, but his hand encircled her wrist before it could make contact.  And then his hand was sliding up hers.  He was laying the palm of his hand to hers, folding his calloused fingers between her own.  A curious trembling ran through her.

“I thought…  I thought you did not want me to come and visit you?” She said the words quietly, but he chose not to answer.

“Your singing.  It was more than lovely.  You are more than lovely.” His eyes were roaming over her, and his voice was low and husky.  “Your fucking hair.  I want to drown in that red, more than I ever wanted anything before.  I want to feel your skin.  I want to feel it against mine.  I want to take every single one of those fucking petticoats off and just… look at you.  I want to look at the hidden parts of you.”

She stared at him, feeling the red replaced by something else. Something she couldn’t name. 

“Want to try to hit me again? You should.  You should do more than try!  Some fucking old drunk of a groundskeeper says he wants to ruin you, and you just stare at him with those fucking angelic eyes!” 

There was the sadness of him again, and before she knew what she was doing she was tightening her fingers amongst his before bringing his hand to her mouth, and kissing the back of it, feeling the softness of the dark hairs there against the swell of her lips.  He breathed in suddenly, before releasing her hand and standing.

“I’ve got to go.  Joffrey’ll be telling his mother about the wild dogs on the loose by now.” He cleared his throat, before offering her a hand and helping her, gently, to stand.    Then his hands were on her waist, holding her at a distance, but somehow also drawing her closer with his dark grey eyes.

“I’ll come see you.  At the kennels.”  She near whispered the words.

“Don’t.  Don’t.” He shook his head, sadly.

“Say I can.  Please.  Say I can.”

He seemed to be in some turmoil. 

But then he nodded, the long hair falling from its tie and covering his scared face.  She gave in to temptation, and with careful fingers, she pushed some of the strands behind his ear, revealing his scars again.   He released her waist and went to leave her again, but this time without the falseness of the bow. 

And somehow it did not feel as heart wrenching as that time.  In fact, something felt as though it was about to take wing and fly from her heart after him.

To distract herself from the rise and fall of her heart, she attended to the fallen books again.  That was when she saw the book plate glued onto the front page of one of the older books on soil erosion. ‘Ex Libris Clegane’ it read.  And three dark dogs ran across a yellow field between the words.


	6. Chapter 6

She sincerely did not want to be here.  She wanted to be at the kennels, thinking of a polite way to bring the conversation around the question of the bookplate. _Ex Libris Clegane.  Ex Libris Clegane._ The words kept repeating in her head.  But when she imagined asking him about them she could see his stern face only getting sterner, his eyes flashing with anger as they had done when Inspector Selmy had asked him if he was the one who had assaulted Lady Maton.  It would be terribly rude of her to question him as though he was some sort of suspect as Selmy had done. He had never told her his family name, and perhaps there was a good reason for that!

But if the books belonged to the Clegane household, then perhaps the Old Keep had also? Was the coarse and crude groundskeeper actually the lord of the Keep? Had he fallen on rough times and sold off his inheritance to the Lannisters?   If he had, it would be terribly impolite for her to ask him about it. One simply did not discuss money.  It was terribly vulgar.  At least that was what she had been brought up to believe.  Of course, that had not stopped Joffrey suggesting that because the Starks of Winterfell were wealthy that the two of them were in some manner equals, and therefore he could be familiar with her.  Overly familiar, truth be told.

She did not want to be here, hovering by the fiscus outside Lady Cersei’s forbidden parlour, hesitating to knock at the ancient looking door. She wanted to be at the kennels, asking questions.  Or drinking tea.  Or… or.

She blushed at the memory of his words.  He wanted to _look_ at her.  At her ‘hidden’ places.

You could not grow up on a large estate like Winterfell, with its herds of cattle, sheep, pigs, and not understand something of the ways of men and women. Of course, she understood perfectly that it was different for humans, once properly married in the sight of God.

But when he had looked at her, she had been reminded a little more of how the dogs at Winterfell would go into heat and pursue each other.  It was not at all like she expected to be wooed once the season started.  Then a gentleman would make a polite introduction, possibly through an acquaintance in common.  Then there would be long walks by the Serpentine, with a chaperone present of course.  Said gentleman would call at the house for afternoon tea.  And at balls he would politely ask to be written into her dance card, hoping for the last dance of the night, so that he might wish her a sweet goodbye when the carriages were lining up outside.

A suitor certainly would not suggest the things that Sandor had suggested!

Why then was she so eager to return to the kennels, and that small cold room of his? Why did the shock that she had felt to the very core of herself seem to be entwined with some other, very unfamiliar, feeling there?

But she had accepted Joffrey’s invitation to tea with Lady Cersei and it would be rude not to attend.  Besides, perhaps it was best to wait a little while before seeing Sandor again.  Reluctantly she raised a small fist and knocked lightly at the door.

“Oh, do please come in!”

Sansa opened the door slowly, and was greeted by what seemed to be a posed tableau.  Joffrey stood by the great bay windows, taking in the land.  He no longer wore the golfing clothes she had grown familiar with.  Instead he seemed to be dressed for dinner, or at least for a much more elegant affair than afternoon tea.  The evening dress suited him well, but Sansa could not help but compare his thin and shorter frame to the largeness of Sandor, a man who seemed to strain at the very seams of his old tweed coat.  She blushed again, and the smile Joffrey gave her seemed to suggest he thought he was the target of her thoughts!

Lady Cersei sat stiffly on a chaise longue, but immediately rose and came to take Sansa’s hands as she entered.  “Oh, sweet girl!” She gushed.

Sansa was immediately glad that she had changed into a pretty tea gown of floating cream lace and tulle, with small red birds embroidered over it by her own hand.  It was suitable for afternoon tea, but Lady Cersei outshone her in a heavy silk yellow dress with golden oak leaves tumbling over it in silken threads.  Even her mother, Lady Stark, never wore such an elaborate and costly looking dress for guests! Sansa blushed again, they must think her a terrible yokel if this is how she should dress for tea in the South.  But Cersei was drawing her down to sit by her on the velvet couch, a cloud of some heady perfume engulfing Sansa as she did.

Sansa almost asked if they would be joined by the Lady’s brother, Jaime, but caught herself just in time.  She should not know that he was here.  None of the other young ladies had mentioned him, and if he was as handsome as Cersei was beautiful, he would not have escaped their notice!

“Oh what a lovely dress! Such clever little birds! And red, like your beautiful hair!” Cersei beamed at Joffrey. “Have you seen how delightful our guest looks, Joffrey?”

“Yes, mother.  She is a vision!” Joffrey moved from his pose by the window and sat across from them.  A very fine set of bone china tea cups sat between them on a low walnut wood table.  Sansa was immediately reminded of the mismatched and cracked cups at the kennels, and she thought fondly of them.  She could see his large hands holding them carefully, his fingers just fitting into the handles, sipping at his tea, and occasionally slurping it as the spirits he’d added to the tea did their work.  Cersei poured for them, and Sansa watched her add milk and sugar to her tea without asking how she liked it.  Perhaps that was the Southron way?

“Now.  Sansa.  You must simply tell us everything about your family and your home.”  Lady Cersei smiled warmly, but as with her son, Sansa found the smile almost artificial.  Sansa had to look away from it, and her gaze travelled the opulence of the parlour.  Thick Indian rugs, large indoor plants, artworks.  And another door in a rich mahogany.  Perhaps leading to Lady Cersei’s chambers?

“There is not much to say.  I have three brothers, one older and two younger.  And a younger sister.  We also have two wards my father took in.”

“Oh, is that so?” Cersei seemed to be interested, but Sansa was not entirely convinced.

“Yes, my father has travelled a lot. Africa.  The Americas.  The Far East.  Theon is the son of an African warchief who died bravely in battle against the English troops.  And Jon is… “ She remembered the way that her father had always explained the awkward, tall boy of Robb’s age. “Jon is the son of an old friend, who sadly passed away many years ago.”

“A big family indeed! Joffrey has two little siblings, Myrcella and Tommen.  They are at boarding school of course.  Did you board Sansa? I think it is terribly important for Myrcella to be mixing with her peers at an early age…”

“No, I did not board my lady. I was schooled in Winterfell with my brothers and sister.”

“Oh.  Well.   The country air seems to have done you good anyway!” Cersei was looking her over.  “Your skin is so ruddy and healthy! And your form is delightful, you have just the right shape for the modern style of corset.”

“Mother!” Joffrey laughed.  “She’s not some animal to be checked over!”

“Oh we need not stand on ceremony here, Joff!” But Sansa wished she would stop.  It was so different to the way that Sandor had looked her over.  His eyes devoured her, burned her up.  Cersei’s eyes were calculating.  How much was Sansa worth, was she suitable?  Sansa was hardly surprised when her next question was about her mother.

“Lady Stark was a Tully was she not?”

“Yes, she is the daughter of Hoster Tully.” The absence of the word ‘lord’ before his name would have made some high society ladies scoff at her roots.  But as Sansa had suspected, Lady Cersei knew her ‘Who’s Who’.  Possibly backwards as well forwards.

“The fish man?” Laughed Joffrey.

“The fish and cannery magnate, sweetling.” Said Cersei with bite.

Sansa felt horribly uncomfortable.  Her grandfather had patented a way of canning fish to keep it fresh for longer.  His Alaskan fish farms were immense, and his wealth even greater with the contracts various wars had brought him. Of course, the downside of being related to the famous ‘fish man’ was the variety of jokes on theme of smells and wet fish.

“And a lord soon enough, if word from the palace is to be believed.” Cersei said almost smugly.

Sansa nodded, her mother had said something similar recently in her letters. The lack of title had never bothered Lady Stark, and marrying the Lord of Winterfell had not secured her place in polite society.  Catelyn Tully had done that in her own right before wed to Eddard.  For some strange reason the groundskeeper popped back into her head unbidden.  But that was not at all the same! Catelyn Tully had been a lady in all but name! He was… he was…. What was he exactly?

“Lady Cersei.  I found a curious thing. Perhaps you can help me to understand it?”

“Of course dearest one! I am a teacher after all!” Sansa held in a small laugh.  Teacher? The Lady barely appeared in the classrooms of the finishing school.

“I found a book.  In the study.  And the book plate said ‘ex libris Clegane’-”

There was a silent pause.  Sansa’s eyes looked between Joffrey and Cersei, seeing the flat, plain looks they shared. As she did, her eyes rested for a moment on the fireplace behind and to the left of Joffrey.  Something about its cast iron surround caught her eyes.  But then Lady Cersei wafted a hand as though her find was a trifling thing.  “Just a hold over from the previous owners of the Keep.”

“Who were the Cleganes?”

“Oh you are a curious little bird aren’t you?” She smiled, a cat’s smile, and Sansa felt fear from Cersei’s presence for the first time.  “Minor lordlings.  Connected with the Lannisters some ways back.  I took over the estate and the Keep when the last of the house bet all he had in a game of bacarrat. A terrible drunk, he rather over played his hand against my brother. Their crest was three dogs running if I recall.”

“Ah, yes, that is what I saw in the book.” She felt downcast.  Sandor had lost the estate in a game of cards, of all things!  And now he had been hired to be its groundskeeper!   She felt disappointed in him, but also _for_ him.   To have to bow and scrap in your own home!

“Oh sweet Sansa, do not spend so much time amongst books.  I fear it will make you rather plain!”  Cersei laughed, and Sansa sipped her tea rather than acknowledge the comment. 

“Of course.  I was only mildly interested.” Sansa said lightly.

Joffrey smiled and stood, moving to the fireplace.  “Have you seen this Sansa?” he gestured to an oil painting in a rather overblown style.  “My great-grandfather killing his first lion!  Your father spent time in Africa as well.  Perhaps you would like to admire it? Isn’t it magnificent!”

Sansa nodded and stood, walking across the thick Indian rugs to stand beside him.  Her path took her past the fireplace, and she looked at the coal blacked iron again.  It was hard to see, but there, shaped into the metal were the three dogs, one for each of the sides of it.  And writ above the middle part was the name Clegane, forged in a rolling script on the metal.   She knew she was familiar with the name.  She must have seen it while on her first visit to the school.

She feigned interest in Joffrey’s stories of his ancestors, but a headache was building behind her eyes, and she begged leave to lie down as soon as she thought she could without being too impolite. Joffrey offered his arm again, of course, but it was all that she could do not to simply run from the room and from them both.  When finally she was alone again in the dorm room, she lay back onto the bed and held the back of her hand to her forehead, feeling the heat building there. 

A gambler.  A drunk.  Crude and improper. Everything she should detest and avoid.  And yet the heat in her skin was ranging all over.  She would see him soon.  She would see him, and ask him about his family and the house. Yes, she would be polite, but firm, and find out more about the Cleganes, and why he had agreed to return to the Old Keep after losing it so foolishly.  She would not be swayed by his intense looks.  Nor by the memory of his hands about her waist.  She would not let him do anything… inappropriate.

She would not.  She would _not_!


	7. Chapter 7

It took her more than a moment to realise what was different about the groundskeeper’s small rooms. To begin with, she had been busy preparing what she would say to him as she made her way up the worn and uneven stones steps to his apartment overlooking the kennels.  Then she had knocked politely and been let in, opening her mouth to begin her prepared sentences, but he had offered her a seat at the table, drawing it out for her in a most courteous way. That had thrown her from her purpose for a moment and blinded her to the changes he had wrought. And then he had poured her a cup of tea, and she was too preoccupied with politely answering his questions about her tastes.  No milk please, and one sugar. He’d nodded and done exactly as she’d asked.

And then finally the changes sunk in.  For one thing, in the days since she had last visited, as accidental as her presence here had been that time, she still thought of it as a visit, the walls seemed to have changed colour. Or was it that they had not even been painted before? She vaguely remembered a rough sand colour irregularly covering the uneven stone work. And now the walls seemed to be a pale blue green hue, and there was the smell of fresh paint in the air. 

Over the roughhewn table there now lay a plain white cloth, its edges unhemmed, but it was clean and freshly pressed.  And he had gathered some small pinkish flowers and placed them in a white jug next to the tea things he’d set out.  But, but… she had not said when she would be visiting?! Had he gone every day to collect fresh flowers? Just in case she chose to come and see him?!

She looked up at his furrowed brow with surprise writ on her face.

“What of it? I’m not completely uncivilised!”  

“No, no, I know that!” Thoughts of the questions she wanted to ask him passed fleetingly through her mind.  But it would be too impolite to greet his attempts at hospitality, his attempts at improving his humble home, with a barrage of personal inquisitions!

He took the other seat at the table, and Sansa noted that where there had been but one place to sit at the table before, not including the sagging old armchair, there were two wooden chairs now. He did not even lean back as he had done the last time he was here. Instead he sat almost as straight backed as she did.

“Did anyone see you walking this way, little bird?” There was concern in his voice, contrasting heavily with the sharpness of his last comment. 

“I think not.  I was careful. I circled back through the copse and kept out of sight.”

Silence stretched out between them.  And then they both spoke at once.

“What flowers are these?-”

“I’m not asking you to do anything-”

Sansa laughed a little and he even smiled aswell, the scars pulling a bit as he did so.

“Dog roses.  Common as muck, but pretty enough.” He said, before pausing. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, you said that you weren’t asking me to do anything.”  She lowered her eyes, thoughts and images of what he might have asked to her to do ran through her mind’s eye. And she blushed deeply.

“No, girl. You came to see me, and that’s enough.  It’s more than enough given what you risk being seen here.  I won’t ask anything else of you.”

A dark smile drifted across his lips then.  And she was struck again by his features, how expressive he could be at one moment, and then as stony faced as all that the next.  His face was weathered a little like stone could be as well, and she wondered quite how much older he was than her… but again, she would not impose questions on him.  Just yet.

“Why do you smile?” She asked lightly, her heart pounding as she wondered what thoughts were occurring to him also.

“I said I’d not ask anything of you, little bird.  But I was wrong. There is one thing I will ask from you.”  He did lean back then, those eyes taking her in again as they had done before.  “While you’re here… whenever you are here, if you come back again… while you’re here, you’ll speak the way you do at home.  When you’re not trying to impress us Southron folk with how the rain falls on the plain in Spain.  Let the North out, girl.  I want to bloody well hear it from your lips.”

She blushed deeply, before meeting his eyes with her own.  “Aye” she said, simply, and he laughed.

“Good girl. The rest… well, I don’t even know what to do with you now I got you here all to myself, truth be told.” He rubbed his hands over his face, over skin cleaned up by soap and a razor.  Had he done that for her too? And his hair as well? Fresh washed and combed, and tied back as smartly as he could make it. 

“You said you wanted to look at me.” She said in a quiet voice.

“I know what I said.  But it’s a pure tonic just to look at you like this.  Politely, over a civil cup of tea in the afternoon.” He drank some more of his, but his eyes never left her. 

She made a decision.  Or rather, she decided to express the decision she had made when she had pressed her lips to his hand.

“Have you ever been to the National Gallery, Mr Clegane?”

“What kind of buggering question is that?!”

“We are being civil, over a cup of tea, are we not? Like proper members of our modern society?”

“No, I haven’t ever been to the fuck- to the National Gallery.” She appreciated his attempt to restrain himself.

“Me neither, ‘truth be told’” She smiled. “But the library at Winterfell has some lovely lithographs from some of their past exhibitions. Did you know that the naked female form is considered by many of most genteel lords and ladies of our country to be… art? Great art in the case of the Venus painted by Vlazquez!

She thought for a moment that he may have stopped breathing.  When he spoke again, he would not meet her eyes.

“I know what I said, girl.  But it ain’t right.”

She stood, feeling dizzier than she had done when he had ‘scotched’ up her tea for her the last time she was here.  Everything that she thought she would say and do when next in his presence had been pushed away by those small lop headed flowers.  And the paint.  And the tablecloth he could not hem. 

“You have a bedroom, do you not?”

He gestured mutely.  The large man had been struck dumb by her, Sansa Stark.  She turned, adding a confident swish to the movement of her long dark skirt, and walked with a new found certainty towards the plain wooden door.  On the other side was an even simpler room.  A small window of warped and bubbled glass let light in, motes dancing in the afternoon sun over a bed, a plain wardrobe and a washstand.  The bed was neat, with corners tucked precisely.  The mark of a man who had served in the army she thought, remembering her own father’s fastidiousness over certain small things like this.

She stood by the bed and looked back to the doorway where he waited, not passing the threshold.

“Come in.”

“No girl, I’ll stand here.” And like a guard dog he neither fidgeted, nor shifted his weight from leg to leg.  But his eyes followed her.  They followed her fingers as she reached for the laces of her ankle boots, and then her stockings after them.  They followed her fingers when they undid the school skirt, when she drew it down over the petticoats he had seen before.  When her blouse was unbuttoned, revealing the lower scooping line of her undershirt and the corset beneath, he spoke. 

“Stop.” He said, almost sounding as though he was close to begging.

“I’ll no’stop.” She said, the North in her voice again.

She removed the undershirt and the petticoats, standing there in her corset and her cotton bloomers. 

“Have you seen a woman in her under things before?”  She did not know why she asked, but the words were out before she could think on them.

“I have. And less. But none of them were as good to look on as you, little bird.”

She nodded, and moved fingers to the laces of her corset.

“Stop!” Now he _was_ begging.  But she let the boned material fall away.  And then pushed down her bloomers and stepped out from them.  She did not try to cover herself and she wondered what he thought of her body.  But then he spoke and she knew.

“Lie on the bed.”

He’d said he’d not ask anything of her.  But now he wasn’t asking. 

But she was not afraid, she wanted this.  She moved to his bed and quickly lay down on top of the sheets.

“Turn over.”

She did as she was told, her skin prickling and goose pimpling under his gaze.  She then lay her head on the pillow, smelling a deep and earthy scent that must be his on them. It was the smell of a man who worked outside, not some manufactured cologne made from flowers that had never bloomed here.  She closed her eyes, and repeated her request.

“Come in.”

This time a floorboard creaked as he stepped into the room, and then she felt the bed shift as he sat on the edge of it. 

“Can I touch as well as look, my lady?”

A shiver ran through her at the closeness of his voice.  “Yes, yes you can.”

A large, strong hand moved to rest itself on the curve of her waist, joined not long after by his other on the other side.  Then the two of them traced soft lines over the swell of her hips and her behind, sweeping around the curve of them and then back up to her waist, before the fingertips found the length of her plait lying on her back.  She felt him pull at the ribbon there, undoing it before running fingers through the braid to pull it gently undone. He spread the thickness of her hair across her back, and she felt it fall, delightfully tickling the sensitive flesh of the sides of her breasts.  And then his fingers followed the path of the hair, working their way through her tresses to feel the shape of her there, before pushing into the bed itself to gain access to her nipples, leaning over her as his fingertips found them and they hardened at his touch. 

She gasped at the intensity of the sensation, and before she knew what was happening he rolled her with one great hand, sweeping her onto her back once more.   His hands found her breasts, but only for a moment, tracing the shape of them before continuing down to where her legs crossed each other slightly.  She knew he was looking at that part of her that she had rarely considered herself.  But then his look was replaced by a touch as his fingers reached the curls there and ran through them as he had down with her plait.  Something was happening to her, but she could not name it.

She opened her eyes, to find his own above her, full of his hunger and his need.  And yet, he was kneeling over her, keeping a distance between them even as his fingers touched her all over.  She was the one who closed that gap, pulling herself up by grabbing a fistful of his white shirt and trusting that he could support her weight as she drew herself to him and placed her lips to his twisted mouth.  The groan that emerged from his lips near drove her mad with her own hunger, and when he kissed her back, his tongue moving with hers as she learnt how he liked to be kissed, she felt the hidden parts of her blossoming.

But then he was pulling away, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking away from her.

“Next time… next time, bring paper and charcoal and I’ll stay at a distance and not feel like such a cur.  Make it more like art, girl, and I’ll not fear ruining you.”  He spoke in a voice that was hoarse with desire, and she watched him from the bed as he rubbed his hands over his face, before leaning his arms on his knees and grasping one hand to another as though to stop them from doing anything else.

“It _was_ … it _was_ art.”

He laughed.  “You’ve got some strange fancies in your head.  If you were to let me, I would rut with you like some wretched beast, and let’s see if you call it fucking art then!” 

She twined herself about his back, pressing her bare flesh against his shirt. 

“I would ruin you girl.  I would have you cast from all polite society.  All those parties and balls you were looking forward to?  Gone.  Any chance of a match with a suitable man?  Gone.  Think on that when you call it art!”

He stood, not looking at her, and went to the other room.  She gathered her things and began to dress quickly.  She could not argue with him, he was certainly right.  But why then did he also seem so very, very wrong?

Once she was dressed she walked purposefully into the other room, finding him sitting inelegantly at the table again, a new bottle of spirits opened up and in his hand.

“Why did you not want me to know your family name?”

“What’s this now?!”

“And why did you not want me to know you once owned the Keep, that you were the last Clegane and heir to the estate?!”

“You can’t be heir to nothing, girl!” He swigged the spirit again. “It ain’t fucking mine any more.  Its hers!” He gestured towards the house with the bottle in his hand still.

“Because you lost it, because you gambled it away?!”

He stopped, and stared at her.  “You been poking about in my business? Don’t think because I want to touch you, and that I … like you, that that gives you any right to be-“

“You’re a lord!”

“Don’t call me that! I’m the groundskeeper! I’m the old dog who guards the gate so you pretty little ladies don’t get defiled!”

“Even by you?!”

“Especially by me!”  Sandor kicked out, knocking the other chair onto its back.  “I’m the worst of them, because I gathered you fucking dog roses in the woods.  At least the other one, the one that got Lady Maton, acts like a fucking monster on the outside as well!”

She knelt quickly, took his hands in her own and placed them against her face.  “I came to you. I’ve been watching you.  I look out my window every night to see your lamp in the darkness.  I think of you in ways no lady should!  This is not just you, do you not see!” She sobbed, tears forming and running down her cheeks.

He took a hold of her arms then, and gently raised her to her feet, pulling her to sit on his knee as though she weighed nothing at all.  His fingertips were on her face as he tried to calm her, brushing away her tears and tidying back strands of her hair.

“I’m no lord, little bird.  And even if I were, the Clegane name ain’t enough to give me the right to have you.”

“My mother had no title and she wed my father.”

He smiled and it made her heart soar to see it again.  “Who was talking about weddings?”

She paused, horrified that she had overstepped some unseen boundary.  But that dark smile was on his lips again. “You’re teasing me!” she exclaimed.

“You make it so easy.  Your mother… a beauty is she?”

“Well, yes-”

“Look at me and tell me that this face is enough to forget a title?  Did she have money too?”

“A large dowry, but-“

He interrupted her again. “Even when the Cleganes held the estate there wasn’t much money in it. And what was left when my father died was spent on women, wine and gambling debts when my older brother took it over.”

“Your older brother?!”

“I’m a drinker.  And I curse a lot, true.  But gambling… that’s a fool’s pastime.”  He stroked her back as he spoke. “The fucking cunt lost it to Tyrion Lannister in a game of bacarrat.  Tyrion gave it to Cersei, probably currying favour since she’s never cared for the halfman-“

“Tyrion? But I thought her brother was Jaime? I heard them speaking in her parlour-“

She felt his shock through his body as his hands stopped their gentle movements over her.

“Jaime’s here?! In the house?”

“Yes.  Does it matter?”

“Yes it bloody matters!” He stopped himself.  “Sorry.  Sansa, it matters because I never saw him arrive! So how the hell did he get into the house?!  How did he get past the gates and the locks… and if he did it, who else could do it?!”


	8. Chapter 8

He was deep in silence, his grey eyes darker and more akin to the colours of a storm than ever.

“Do you think that Jaime Lannister could have attacked Lady Marella?”  She whispered the words, she didn’t want to disturb him but this dark fugue was disturbing her.

“I don’t know much of the man, to be honest.  He’s never visited before.  He’s in the king’s own guard at the Palace.  They say he’s alike in looks to Lady Cersei, his twin.  Though good looks never guaranteed a good heart, little bird.”

His large hand started its slow strokes of her back again, feeling it’s way through the length of her loose hair there.

“Should I go?” She asked, hoping he would say no.  Sitting here, on his knee like some musical hall girl, was the most thrilling place she had ever been.  The closeness of him.  The scent of him.  She could see the few strands of his dark hair at the top of his unbuttoned shirt, the first man’s shirt she ever had seen without a collar attached to it.  She let her right hand slowly run down over the strap of his braces on his back.

“I don’t ever want you to go, girl.” She breathed more deeply at his words and he looked into her eyes.  “Did you mean what you said? That you think on me, at other times?”

“More than I should.  Or, perhaps, more than I am told I should.” She whispered, her eyes drawn to his lips.  Kissing him had been so very pleasant, his scars that made his face so horrible to others were not unpleasant on her mouth.  Perhaps even the opposite.  She had not known a kiss like it before.  She had imagined only chaste kisses once an engagement was agreed with some suitable match.  And then perhaps more when they were wed.  But she wanted more now. With him.

His large hand moved hesitantly towards her, coming to lie on her chest over the mother of pearl buttons of her blouse.  He touched her reverently, moving over the light material and caressing her there before slipping fingers between the buttons and under her shirt to make contact with her skin.

“Should I?” She looked at him with nervous eyes, bringing her hands to the fastenings.

“You’d best. I’ll rip them apart soon otherwise.” His eyes captured hers as she undid the fiddly damn things.  And she did not care that she was cursing, she just wanted to feel that coarse palm of his against the soft skin of her chest and neck.  Soon it was done, and his hand felt the contours of her collarbone, sweeping slowly over the very heart of her and then to the valley of her breasts created by her corset.

Then his lips were there, on her skin, kissing her on the smattering of freckles she had.  She’d always been ashamed of them, blaming herself for her youthful desire to run under the sun whenever it was out in Winterfell.  A lady should not expose her skin to the heat of the sun in such a way, and she always felt that they were a mark of her inability to be truly a proper lady.  Sandor seemed to feel differently.

“These are so beautiful.” He said, never letting up on his kisses.  Her hands moved to his head and his hair, releasing it from the bond he had it in, and twisting her fingers in it as he had done with hers. “You are so beautiful.” He was looking up at her again, his eyes focussing on her mouth.  But she had been the one to kiss him before in the bedroom, and she wanted him to claim her.  He groaned in frustration, before dashing his mouth against hers, passion compelling him to roughly dance his lips against hers, pulling her closer to him.  She felt a moan emerged from her, a lascivious thing she would have never thought she was capable of before.   And she wanted more of him yet.

His hands were pushing at her loosened shirt, exposing her undershirt, its frills lying over the edge of the low scoop of her corset. She helped him take it away as well, keeping her mouth to his as much as she could as it was removed. And then she found her hands moving to his shirt.  He pulled away, smiling.

“You want me to undress too, girl?”

“I want…” She was breathing deeply, her chest moving in her corset in a way his eyes told her he had certainly noticed.  “I want to look at you too.”

“Your National Gallery got male nudes too?”  He smirked at her, and she returned the smile.

“Quite a few actually.”

“Is that so? So does the Lady Sansa know what a naked man looks like already then?”

She blushed deeply.  “They have these… leaves.”

"What’s that? Leaves?!”

“Over their…” She swallowed deeply. “manhoods.”

His laugh was deep and she was shaken by the movement of it on his knee. 

“What you do to me couldn’t be covered by some bloody leaf, girl!”  He looked closely at her, his fingers drifting about her hair. “You know what happens when a man wants to lie with a woman?” She lowered her eyes, feeling hotter than ever, and he tilted her head back up with a gentle hand. “We can stop this now, we can always stop, little bird.” 

She met his eyes, not defiantly, but with an open heart. “I want to look at you.”

He nodded and helped her to stand as he got up, offering her his seat.

“The bedroom?” She asked.

“Not everything has to happen in the bedroom.” His hands were on his braces, pulling them down. “Have you seen animals when they mate?  You have farm land and cattle, and dogs and the like, don’t you?”

She nodded.

"Good, then you know something of it all. Don’t be afraid.  A dog mating is different to what happens between a man and a woman.  Well, mostly.” 

He took his shirt off in a swift movement.  And Sansa could only stare at the broad expanse of his chest, the thick dark hairs spreading across it, and the muscles of him.  It was as though he was carved from marble like the images of the statues she had seen, but writ over in dark and thick hair that made him so much more masculine than the frozen nude gods.  But like them, the shapes and plains of him were put together in a proportion that was pleasing and… arousing.  That was what was happening to her, she knew that now, even with her inexperience.  And the broad chest and finely muscled waist led down to the waistband of his trousers.  Where his hands were now.

He paused, and then started to undo the fastening there.  She watched as he pushed them down, revealing himself before moving the trousers away.  His manhood was erect, and it was truly like nothing that Sansa had ever seen before.  He was correct, it was different to the little she had gathered of animals and their parts.  But she was not afraid as she sat there on the simple wooden chair in his rooms, watching him.

He neither stood proudly, nor ashamed, he just watched her looking at him.  And her eyes took in every detail, from base to tip.  The thick dark hair where it joined him body, merging with the hair she had already admired on his chest.  The hanging parts of him, hinted at through the same hair.  The colours of it, the soft pinks and flesh tones.  She found her eyes darting to the gentle hues of the dog roses, and saw the same pink in them.  She looked back, finding his eyes with her own.

“So, are you going to draw me like one of those gallery nudes so you can remember this later?”

“I’ll remember.”  She said with a sweet smile on her lips and he laughed. She watched the movement of it ripple across his body and his manhood.

“What do women… do with it?”

“Whatever they want to. Though, I hear most high up ladies just lie back and think of England as their husbands put themselves inside them-”

“And it fits?!”

A dark smile was on his lips, his eyes twinkling with devilish mirth.  “All men are different, girl.  But yes, it fits. If you do it right.” 

“What do you mean?”

“You were warm when I touched you, weren’t you?  Feeling something between your legs you’ve not felt before? Well, you touch a woman right and she gets ready for it.  Touch her wrong, or not at all, and it’s more difficult.”

“And if I touched you.” She paused, in shock at herself for daring to ask and speak on such things. “If I touched you, would you get ‘warm’ too?”

“I already am.  I have been every bloody time I’ve been near you Sansa.  But you can touch, if you want to.”

She took a deep breath, smelling him at this closeness as well.  The deep scents of wood and earth, and the muskiness of his flesh so close to her.  She stood, taking the small step towards where he stood by the table.  She began at his chest, working on the courage to move lower.  She felt the dense hair there, surprisingly soft.  She felt the shape of his chest, finger nails moving over his nipple and earning a gasp from him as he closed his eyes and raised those thick dark eyebrows.

A lady would not do this.  A lady would not do this.  The words repeated in her head.   But this lady would do this.  This lady would let her fingers trace over his hard belly, skirting over his navel and then down to his manhood.  All she did at first was let them run over the length of him, smiling to herself as he trembled and groaned at the touch.  That strange and new tension between her own legs was growing ever stronger, and if it felt even half as good for him as her… well, perhaps she would not stop. 

She wrapped her fingers about him, holding still for a moment as he moaned.

“Is this how I should touch it?”  She asked in a breathy voice.  He was so hot, the skin was scorching her palm.

“God, Sansa, it feels good!”  He was breathing heavily, his large fists clenching and unclenching at his side.  “But I haven’t been with a woman in an age.  I’ll not have much control.”  There was a warning in his words, but one that she didn’t understand.

“Control?”

He opened his eyes and looked down at her.  “You could finish me with a look, girl.  I’m holding on as best I can as it is.”

Finish him? She wasn’t certain she understood and he picked up on her confusion, gently removing her hand.  He spoke around his breathlessness. 

“You don’t know what happens.  Truly?”

“I know some things.” She fought the urge to be defensive, he wasn’t being unkind.  “I know that men and women lie together to make babies.  From his seed.  That he puts in her belly.”

“And to get the seed there he… bugger it, I don’t know what word you would use! He finishes.  He climaxes.  He achieves his buggering completion.” He was getting frustrated, but it was as though he was speaking another language to her.  Then suddenly he was kneeling in front of her, pushing up at her skirts, lifting them and reaching for her under things.  She gasped.

“I could show you.  I could show you how women can do it too.”  She stepped back from him, almost stumbling back over the wooden chair behind her.

“What are you doing?!” She exclaimed.

“It aint just men that can finish.  Sansa, let me do this for you.” 

“I don’t know… I don’t.” She looked down at him, naked but unashamed of it.  Freer than she had ever been.  And she sat down on the chair, pulling at her skirts herself.  “Teach me.”

He smiled that wolfish smile, and pushed them up higher, finding the waistband of her bloomers and pulling them down in a swift movement that forced her to lift herself in the chair for him.  She was exposed to him now, more than she had been even on the bed when her legs had been together.  And he was moving his large hands over the inside of her thighs, pushing them even further apart as he moved closer to her. 

The first touch of his fingertip against her made her jump. “Calm yourself, girl. I won’t hurt you.”  He reached for something, and the next thing she knew was the gentle silken touch of the petals of the dog rose against her most hidden parts.  A long sigh fell from her lips, and unbidden a line from Shakespeare emerged in her mind, _Where the bee sucks, there suck I._

The tickling touch of the flower was increasing the tension again, and when he replaced it with his fingers she was readier for him.   They ran through her curls and between the hidden folds of her, finding places she had not known existed before this day.  One particular point had her near jumping in the seat again, but his hand on her thigh held her steady.  But when his mouth rested over her she moaned, letting the built up tension flow out in her voice.  The simple movement of his lips against her hidden parts had her building towards something.  And when the wave washed over her, she knew finally what he had meant by ‘finishing’, and her moan was louder yet.  Even in the heady bliss of it she was aware of him moving a hand to the length of himself between his legs.  And moments later he was moaning his own song and finding his own ‘completion’ it seemed.

She felt him lie against her, his head in her lap, and she cradled it there as her own breath steadied.  This was what happened between men and women?! Why were they not teaching these things when preparing young ladies for the world and marriage? But then the thought of Cersei Lannister’s Finishing School for Exceptional Young Ladies actually involving lessons on finishing, especially with the dour Miss Mordane taking them, made her laugh until he looked up at her, dark eyes through the escaping fronds of his hair.

“Did it amuse you?!” His mouth twisted, his eyes flashing, and for a moment she saw a bared and honest uncertainty and weakness in him.  She did not wish to know who he had done this with before, no not at all, but she wondered if he had ever done it with someone who cared at all for his feelings, as she did now.

“Not this, my love! A foolish thought on how women should be taught to finish… at finishing schools!”  And then the pain in his eyes was gone and he was moving up her to kiss her, softly, sweetly, before moving away and gathering his clothes.

“You would be a very good student, I have no doubt.”

“Only if you took the lessons!”  She gathered her small things and rearranged her skirts.  The dog rose lay on the floor and she picked it up and looked at it, feeling the memory of its touch, and his, between her legs.

“Going to keep it as a reminder?”  He asked, pulling his braces up over those large arms.  She stood and went to him, kissing him again.

“I told you that I would not need a reminder.”

He looked at the darkening skies through the windows.  “I said I would not have you go, little bird.  But I also would not have them looking for you and finding you in the kennels.  With your honour besmirched…”  He looked at her, and again she saw those unguarded feelings in him again.

“My honour is intact.  And I now know that it would have been even if we had lain together.  Or else, honour must be such a frail thing indeed if love can break it!”

“Twice you’ve used that word now, little bird.  I hope you mean it.” There was a dangerous edge in his voice, a hoarseness, and she took his hand in hers, feeling the callouses and the scars there, but wondering if the worst of them were in fact on his heart.

“I mean it.  Whatever the days bring us, I mean it.”

“Come see me another day then, and sing me a song.  My love.”  He said the words hesitantly as though they were foreign to his tongue.  And she partially hoped they were.

She smiled and kissed the back of his palm again.

“But be careful in the house.  If Jaime is there, come back to me straight away.   Propriety be damned.  If there’s an unknown man in that house I want you out, and I’ll get you to the village and telegram Scotland Yard my fucking self! Cost be damned as well.”

He kissed her with a force then, making her lose her breath, and causing her head to spin all over again.  And when she moved to go, he laid a hand momentarily on her back, as though unwilling to be rid of the touch of her.


	9. Chapter 9

With so many young ladies occupying the same household it was usually very difficult to ensure privacy during bathing.  Ordinarily the serving girls in their black uniforms would heft hot water from the kitchens, two of them to each large bucket, and fill one or two steel baths and the girls would take turns.  Standing outside the bathroom waiting for their turn, they would natter and fidget like hens, calling through the door in sing song voices asking when the bathers would be done.  Sansa had shared her bathtimes with Arya and her mother before, and found the whole situation fairly familiar.  Other ladies, more used to their own bathroom next to their own chambers, decried the lack of solitude, the spoiled water, the wait.  But Sansa enjoyed the bustle and chatter of bath nights.

Strange then that this night the bathroom was unoccupied, but Sansa was pleased as she realised that meant that she could have it all to herself.  And that she could be alone with her thoughts about Sandor.  The other ladies were already changing for bed, putting on their laced nightdresses , some tying their hair up with strips of linen to keep curls, others brushing their hair a hundred times over like mermaids.  But none seemed to be taking up the offer of the available baths just down the hallway.

So Sansa quickly collected her night robe, her towel and a bar of soap from beside her bed, and made the long walk down the draughty and dark corridor to the steam filled bathroom.  In the absence of the chatter of young women the bathroom echoed spookily as she made a slight splash as she entered the heat of the tub. 

She wallowed in the water, dipping down to wet her hair until it bloomed around her head like a red flower.  She rested hands on her raised thighs, and remembered his hands there just hours before. 

Sansa almost couldn’t believe that what had happened had in fact happened.  She had the clearest memory of it all, the movement of his fingertips over her skin, the feel of the hair on his chest, the heat of his manhood in her hand… the bliss of her first completion as it had rushed through her.  But the whole afternoon had been so unlike anything she had ever experienced before, or ever thought that she would experience, it almost seemed to be a dream now.  A very pleasant dream.  One she dearly wished to have again 

A noise interrupted her, removing the smile from her lips and making her eyes dart to the door.

Footsteps in the hallway outside.

“It’s all right!” She called out. “They only prepared one bath, but I can be out soon!”

She expected a sweet voice to reply to say that it was perfectly fine and that they would wait.  But no one answered.

“How rude.” said Sansa under her breath.  To be fair, since Margaery left she had not spent much time mixing with the other ladies, and perhaps they did not want to converse with her now.  She’d either been diligently taking part in her classes, writing copious notes on every single detail of the royal court or how to make the perfect first impression.  Or she had retreated to the peacefulness of the study where she could play the piano.  Or, as she had today, she had left the house and the ladies behind entirely, and spent the afternoon with her new… love.

Before she had time to sink into the delightful aspects of that word she heard whoever it was in the hallway outside walking again, making the old wooden floorboards of the attic halls creak as their weight shifted over them.   The sound was louder than she expected, but of course normally with so many ladies waiting in line for the bath she would not have noticed footsteps at all.  But now she could hear them quite clearly as they moved away from the door and… into the next room?

There were other attic spaces divided up by thin walls into rooms.  Two were on either side of this bare white bathroom, which contained only a washstand, a mirror and the metal tubs that had been designated for the ladies’ toilette.  An actual lavatory was available back towards the attic dorm room in a tiny windowless space.  But the rooms on either side of the bathroom were just empty storage spaces, with trunk cases and crates covered over in dust and cobwebs.  Which of the ladies would want to go in there?!

Something told Sansa she should wallow in the water no longer, even if she had not as yet washed the soap over herself.  Quickly, but carefully, she emerged from the tub and roughly dried her long limbs with the harsh off white towel.  She suddenly felt the need to move faster, her legs almost aching with the need to run.  It was as though she was some prey who had felt the gaze of the predator before even seeing him.  She suddenly wanted to go back to the kennels, to curl up on his bed and to feel safe again under his gaze, and not this stranger’s eyes.

Tying the bathrobe about her, she ignored the wetness of her hair and near enough ran back down the hall to the dorm room.  She charged through the doorway, shutting it quickly behind her and putting her back to it as her breath came in quick bursts.

“Sansa saw him! Look! Look at her face!”

That was Lady Lollys Stokeworth, a friendly but big boned girl.  Usually she had a ready smile for Sansa.  Not now.  Now she was staring aghast at her and pointing.

“I told you we should have stopped her!”

Sansa saw that all the young ladies were kneeling on their beds in the slight candlelight, as though she had interrupted their gossiping. 

“I said I didn’t realise she was going until it was too late to stop her!” Said Lady Amiella.

“What… what’s going on?!”  asked Sansa, her heart still thudding.

“You saw him, didn’t you? The ghost?!” shrieked another girl.

“I didn’t see anything.  But I felt…”  
  
“That’s it! Sometimes you just feel him watching!” Amiella cried.  “We should have told you, but we’ve hardly seen you.  We’ve all avoided the bathroom since… since he grabbed Lollys in the dark.  She got away, but he’s still out there!”

Sansa ran to her bed and quickly pulled the covers up over herself, not even changing into her nightgown, and not caring about her dripping hair. “Have you told Lady Cersei about this?!”

They all looked guilty, their eyes moving to look at each other for support. 

“We can’t!” exclaimed Lady Genna. “It’s all our fault he’s here, and if she finds out, she’ll send us home.”

“If we have to have that rotten roly poly again I might not even care.” Grumbled Lollys.

“I don’t understand.  What do you mean it’s your fault?! Did you let him into to the house?!” Well, that might explain why Sandor hadn’t seen the intruder enter the house.

“Amiella _summoned_ him.” Wailed Genna and the others nodded earnestly.  Amiella frowned.

“That’s not fair! It wasn’t just me! You all wanted to play with the Ouija board! It’s not my fault!”

Sansa had heard enough of old Nan’s ghost stories to suspect what they were talking about, even if she had never dabbled with Ouija Boards and seances herself.  “You think you brought a spirit here?!”

“An angry spirit!”

Sansa frowned.  Old Nan could be very convincing during the long dark nights at Winterfell, her face light by the flickering light of candles as the little ones gathered around her to hear her stories of spirits, ghosts, and of the Children of the Forest.  But given what had happened to Lady Marella, she found it hard to believe that the intruder was anything but a normal man.  A very wicked man.  And if it had been his eyes she had felt on her… she needed to get word to Sandor!

But it was night, the doors were locked!

An idea occurred to her suddenly.  They only had a few small candles here, but in the study there were gas lamps.  He would be doing his rounds of the grounds with the dogs.  She could use the lamps and try to signal to him! Once he came to the house they might be able to find a way for her to tell him what was wrong.

She shivered at the thought of going back into those dark hallways where the intruder might be.  Perhaps then she should wait until morning and get to the kennels when she was free from her lessons? The thought of seeing him again so soon, even given the circumstances, excited her, and she suddenly remembered the feel of him in her hand.  She blushed, ignoring the girls’ continued discussion of the ‘ghost’, who was either a dead lord, a pirate, or a butcher’s boy depending who was the most certain of it. She dried her hair as thoroughly as she could, dressed in her nightgown and drew herself down into her creaking bed. 

But even after the girls’ high pitched voices had dimmed to mere whispers, and then dropped off as each one had succumbed to sleep, Sansa found herself still staring up into the darkness.  Perhaps they could sleep because their ‘ghost’ stuck to the dark and creepy halls and corridors of the Keep.  Perhaps they felt safe in these beds, surrounded by other ladies.  But Sansa did not feel safe at all, because she suspected that it was really a man out there in the dark, watching. A man who had taken Marella from her bed and into one of those derelict attic rooms.  Was it Jaime Lannister, or someone else, who ‘haunted’ the Old Keep?  

She made a decision.  If there was an intruder, then Sandor had to know.  He’d said he’d get her to the village and call for help, and the thought of being with him, and being truly safe and away from this disturbing place, was temptation enough to get her up from her bed again, against all common sense. 

She knew the layout of the room well enough to make her way to the door in the dark, even though Lolly’s strewn about boots threatened to trip her, and she carefully snuck through it. She raced down the dark corridor, passing the bathroom at the end, and then turning left towards the wooden stairs, having to run past the empty room beside it.   If he was in there, she didn’t hear him.  But the feeling that there were strange eyes on her was very strong though, and suddenly she saw herself as he would.  A pale faced girl lit by moonlight coming through attic windows, with hair turned black in the night, running through the halls on bare feet in a drifting white cotton nightdress.  She could almost see his hands reaching for her as she sped down the staircase, her heart beating as she thought she was going to slip. Any second now they would reach her hair and drag her back to some dusty room!

But there were no hands, he was not chasing her, and soon she found herself in the study, her heart pounding as she caught her breath.  In the moonlight pouring through the French doors he found a lamp quickly, and matches besides it.  Lighting it took more steadiness than her shaking hands could give her, but eventually it was done and she took it to the glass. 

But she hadn’t realised how the light from the lamp would cast the night into greater darkness.  She can’t see if his light is out there.  She can’t hear the dogs, but sometimes they do run quietly for him.

See me, she thinks, see me Sandor, as though she is a lighthouse in the dark, guiding him away from the rocks and to safety.  But she is the one who needs a safe harbour, and she thinks he might be the one who can bring her to it.  The girl in the white nightdress waits, barely breathing, eyes trying to look past the light of the lamp, hoping the groundskeeper will find her.

But it is not Sandor who opens the door to the study.


	10. Chapter 10

Sansa screamed.

But within seconds Joffrey had charged across the room and had rammed his hand against her mouth cutting the scream off abruptly.  He held it there roughly, his other had grabbing at the back of her head and keeping her still.  She dropped the lamp as she struggled against him, the flame sputtering and going out.

“What on earth!” He shouted at her, his face so very close to hers.  “What are you playing at?!”

She whimpered against the vice like grip of his sweaty palms. 

“I’ll take them away if you stay silent!”

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears as she looked at him over his hand.  He slowly removed his hands.  And Sansa screamed again, a long and high pitched wail with all her force and breath behind it. 

The slap knocked her to the floor.

"I told you to be silent!”

She held a hand to the red mark blooming on her face, and looked up at him.  He was leaning over her, furious and sneering.

“Mad fucking bitch! Do you want to wake up the entire Keep?!”

“Get away from me! Don’t you touch me!”

His lip curled and he snorted, turning away as the door opened again and Lady Cersei stormed in.  Sansa saw now that Joffrey was in his pyjamas.  Cersei likewise was dressed for bed in a long silk slip, her golden crown of hair loose over her shoulder.  And rage flowed from her like a fire.  Joffrey leapt away from Sansa.

“What _is_ going on here?!” She roared.

“Joffrey- Joffrey was the one who attacked Marella!” Sansa pointed at him accusingly.

“Who?!” Joffrey spluttered. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Cersei glared at Sansa, her eyes narrowing as she considered her, before looking back to her son.  “Joffrey, what is going on here?!”

“I heard someone running through the Keep, past my bedroom.  Found her in here.  What were you doing with that lamp?!”

“He was upstairs, watching the girls!”

“I was not! I was asleep until you charged past like some mad hag!”

“Joffrey…” Cersei’s voice was soft, but commanding and Joffrey threw up his hands and stalked away from them, going to a wooden cabinet and bringing out a bottle and a tumbler.

“Joffrey!”

“Oh damn it mother, one drink won’t turn me into _him_!”

Cersei took a deep breath and focussed her attention onto Sansa again, a false smile emerging on the headmistress’ face.

“Why were you running about the Keep in your night dress, Sansa?” she said in a deceptively soft voice.“

"There was someone up in the attic, in the dorms, watching.  And then Joffrey-"

“And you put two and two together and made five.  Silly girl.  There was no one in the attic.”  She came to Sansa and offered her a hand to get up, and then she brought her to sit at the piano stool with her, a gentle hand putting Sansa’s wild hair back in place for her.

“What about what happened to Marella?!” asked Sansa. The hand paused in its attentions, but then began again.  Sansa fought the urge to shake her head and make her hair even more wild and untidy.

“Why were you in the study Sansa? If there was someone in the Keep you should have fetched me… I would have sent a boot boy to the village to get the constable!”

“I was… there was…” Sansa was tongue tied. She couldn’t tell Lady Cersei she’d been trying to attract the groundskeeper to the house!

“I think you’ve just gotten a little over excited Sansa.  I have some pills you could take-”

“Maybe it was Jaime?!” said Sansa as soon as the thought came to her, before she really had chance to think through what her suggestion would reveal to the older woman. 

Cersei’s face was stone like and Sansa had a sudden feeling of danger.  She had been scared when Joffrey had entered the room, terrified when he’d grabbed her.  But now she was petrified under the woman’s cold gaze.

“What?” said Joffrey. “My uncle? He’s not here!” He smiled at her as though she was deluded.

“He is! He _is_! He was in your mother’s parlour, talking with her about Marella and what happened to her!”

“Is no one going to tell me what did happen to this ‘Marella’?” said Joffrey curtly.

“Shhh, Joff.  I want to know how Sansa came to think that my brother was in my parlour?”  There was danger in those words.

“I heard him…” her words came out awkwardly as she realised what she was confessing to.  But Cersei barely reacted.  At least not how Sansa expected she would when faced with an eaves dropper.

“Shush Sansa.  You’ve obviously worked yourself into state over nothing.  You’ve had a bad dream, or too many wild daydreams while in Miss Mordane’s dull classes, and now you’ve convinced there are hidden men everywhere.  These sort of fantasies are not unusual at your age, dear.”  She smiled patronisingly.

“I heard him!” Sansa was starting to shake, her frustration at being placated and patronised emerging through her body. “And I heard the man in the attic! Marella was attacked up there!”

“You’re becoming hysterical Sansa.” Cersei looked at Joffrey and before Sansa could react, he had moved behind her and grabbed her by her upper arms, pinching her skin through her nightdress.

“Let me go! Let me go!” She struggled against him, which only helped Cersei’s description of her as hysterical.

“I think it’d be best if we gave you those pills I mentioned… and then you can get some sleep.”

“We could put her in your room mother, and I’ll keep watch out in the parlour next door-”

“No!” Cersei snapped quickly. 

Joffrey grumbled behind Sansa. “You don’t actually think I had anything to do with this Marella nonsense do you?! Wasn’t she the one with the buck teeth and the questionable inheritance? God, mother, give me some credit!  I know the situation with Margaery was unfortunate.  But that was just a simple miscommunication, I thought she wanted-”

“Shut up Joffrey!” Cersei near screamed.  Sansa gasped, wondering what he had done to Margaery.  But, another thought was pushing that one away.  It wasn’t concern she’d seen on Cersei’s face when Joffrey had suggested her room.  But something more akin to panic.  What did she have in there that she didn’t want disturbed?

“We’ll put her in one of the guest rooms on the first floor.  The Africa room has a lock on the door, I believe-”

“No! No! You can’t!” But they could, there were two of them, and however slight Joffrey was in comparison to Sandor, he was more than strong enough to force her to her feet now and make her walk with them to the hallway.  Sandor was on her mind, she was just thinking how different things would have gone if he had seen her lamp before Joffrey had found her.  So for a moment she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her and making him appear where he could not be.  But the jumbled shape lying in the shadows at the top of the discreet stairs down to the kitchens _was_ him.

She wrenched herself from Joffrey’s hands and ran to his side, falling to her knees as her hands ranged over the unconscious man, trying to find what was wrong.  There was blood sprayed over the tweed of his jacket, blood soaking the back of his loose hair.  She sobbed.

“What is this now?!” Cersei snapped. 

“That’s our bloody dog, mother! He’s not allowed in the house!” Joffrey looked disgusted at the very thought of it.

“Is this your intruder Sansa?!  Seems someone caught him at it, the filthy old pervert! I’ll wake the housekeeper and we’ll have the constable here in a trice!”

“No! No! He’s not like that!” Blood was staining her hands, getting on the soft material of her nightdress, but at least she could feel the slow rise and fall of his chest.  “He’s a good man!”

“How on earth…?! Have you been… associating with this man, Sansa?!” Cersei seemed horrified, but then her voice was filled with triumph. “Well, I did think that you were just a silly girl, but it seems that you’re just a silly little _slut!_ ”

Sansa glared up at her, but then Joffrey was pulling her from Sandor’s side and dragging her by her hair and nightdress towards the grand stairs leading up to the guest rooms.

“No! No!” she cried out all the way, kicking and fighting all the way, but to no avail.  From the balcony, before Joffrey pushed her into the room and locked the door, she saw Cersei standing over Sandor, her hands on her silk clad hips. 

“The police will be very interested in talking to you, dog.  Sniffing around young ladies' skirts is going to get you a very small, very cold, kennel to live in for the rest of your days!”


	11. Chapter 11

Sansa heard the finality of the key in the lock behind her, and she fought the very strong urge to fling herself onto the large bed’s tribal print blankets and to weep and wail at how unfair it all was.  But Sandor needed her help and that kind of behaviour helped no one at all. 

Instead she examined the guest room they’d put her in.  The African theme was clear in the patterns on the bed, but also in the number of animal heads secured to the walls.  There were several horned beasts.  Gazelles perhaps? Though there were different marks and colours on their fur and their horns varied in style.  A lion skin complete with head was on the wooden floor, and she stepped over the poor beast gingerly as she moved to considered the furniture in the room.  A large many drawed dresser had its parts flung open as she scoured it for anything useful.  She found many balls of dust, a pack of playing cards, and a comb that was no weapon at all.  There was also a collection of paste board cards with women in states of undress on them in sepia hues.  Sansa paused with those in her hands for a moment, her curious eyes taking in the way that the women were displaying themselves and their parts.  Some were even with men, erect men, and she saw that Sandor had been correct.  All men were indeed different!

But eventually she threw the cards to the floor in anger. There was nothing here of any use! She’d hoped at least for a pen she could use as a weapon if needs be, but the thought of plunging it into someone’s flesh makes her feel unwell anyway.  Perhaps, when the police came, she could use the weapons she _did_ have.  She was Lady Sansa Stark.  She had a name, she had a family of worth.  If she could be there when they tried to put Sandor in manacles perhaps she could vouch for him!

She sat down heavily on the bed, a wave of despair claiming her.  There were several problems with that idea.  First, she would have to be able to leave this room to be there when that happened.  Second, Cersei was bound to either denounce her as some kind of strumpet, or as another poor victim of Sandor, just like she was going to claim Lady Marella was. And of course there was the way she looked! Her hair was wild, her hands covered in blood, and she wore a blood stained nightdress

Well, thought Sansa firmly, she could do something about the last of those problems.

On the washstand was a bowl and a jug of water. It was stale and old, the room obviously not having been used for a while and the maids having been careless in their attentions of it.  But a little was enough to wash the blood from her hands.  Then the old comb at least partially rectified her hair. The night dress… she examined the closet, finding men’s clothes.  Uniforms mostly.  A few dress shirts, in very large sizes.  Trousers folded and hung up.

What would be worse? To appear as a harridan in a blood stained nightdress or to attempt to wear men’s clothes? And rather large ones at that?!  She made a decision and pulled the shirts and trousers out, quickly taking her nightdress off over her head and replacing it with a plain white shirt.  The shirt fell to her knees, which almost raising a laugh even given the direness of her situation.  She rolled the sleeves back to free her hands, and then considered the trousers, holding them up at arm’s length.  Without them she would be near naked, her legs bared from ankle to knee.  But with them, she would have to roll them up and then walk about holding them up at the waist.  She looked about in the closet some more and found some braces.  The memory of running her hand over his back, over the length of his braces came to her, and she worked even quicker to get dressed.  Looping them over her shoulders she attached them to the trousers, but they hung so low on her she was bound to trip up.  So she pulled at the braces on her shoulders and tied quick knots in them, before rolling up the length of them.  Even though she normally wore bloomers in the day, it was distinctly odd to feel the thicker material between her legs!

The mirror in the closet told her the entire effect was comical.  A policeman might be more likely to arrest her as a public nuisance and a madwoman than to listen to her!  

She was still looking at herself in the mirror when the quiet but rapid knock came at the door.  If that was Joffrey she would give him a slap in return!

“Sansa?” The voice was indistinct, weak

“Sandor!” She rushed to her side of the locked wooden door that separated them.  “Are you well?!”

“I have a blinding head ache… and there’s blood.

“Where’s Joffrey and Cersei?”

“The cunt went back to get another drink.  Cersei’s down with the housekeeper now, getting her to send a boy to the village.  Quick girl, we don’t have much time. This is the African room isn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Good.  Go to the impala on the wall.  There’s a spare key to the door in its mouth.”

“The impala?!”

“Tan beast.  Black tips to its ears.  Long face.  Horns go out to the side before they go upwards.”

She looked about the room, finding the one she thought that he meant.  Reaching up on tip toes, she found the small silver key and darted back to the door.  Her hands trembled as she tried to get it to turn, but finally the door was open and he was in the room with her, moving quickly to lock the door behind him. 

He rested his back against it, and she smiled, expecting a warm greeting.  But he looked her over and growled at her, his scars twisting in the darkness of the room.

“Get those fucking clothes off!”

“Sandor!”

“Do it!”

For a moment she was afraid.  What were his intentions?! He’d never hurt her before, and when he’d demanded she take her skirt off before he’d only meant to help her.  So she complied, pulling down the braces and letting the trousers drop as she pulled the shirt over her head.  She was naked, and she trembled.

He looked away, which surprised her.  “Put your nightdress back on, girl.” His voice was softer, but no less commanding for it.  And she slipped it over herself quickly.

He looked at her then. 

“I thought, since my nightdress is stained, I thought I should try to dress in case I needed to speak to the police on your behalf! I know it looked ridiculous-

“Those were my brother’s clothes.” He said flatly.

“I’m so sorry! I did not know he was dead.  I did not mean to be disrespectful-”

“It ain’t that, little bird. And he ain’t dead.  He’s off in Africa doing what he loves best.  Killing people who don’t look like him, for money.  But I won’t have you wearing that bastard’s clothes.  I won’t have anything of his near you.”

He moved to the bed then, sagging, weary.  The blood on the back of his head was dark and was slicked through his hair.  He rested his hands on his knees, his head falling forward.

Sansa darted to the washbasin and filled it with more water, bringing it to the bed with a towel.  Kneeling behind him, she removed his worn tweed jacket before starting to clear away the blood and rinsing his hair, seeing where the edges of his scars merged with his hairline around his ruined ear.

“What happened Sandor? How are you here?!”

“I found the secret way into the Keep.  It was in the bloody kennels the whole fucking time! Right beneath me! One of the dogs was het up about something, but wouldn’t come out of the back of where they sleep for me to look at him.  So I went in to check him o’er.  I never bothered with back there before, they’ve always come when I called them.  And then I find that there’s a bloody door there!  And someone’s been using it recently.  It led to a tunnel, which came out in the wine cellar where someone’s been sleeping.  I found food and a bed roll in one corner.”

He winced as she gently patted the towels against the cut on his scalp.  There was swelling there too.

“I heard a scream, your scream I thought, and I was just heading for the stairs from the cellar when some cunt hit me from behind.  I dragged myself through the kitchens and then up to the hall before I blacked out.  I had to get to you, Sansa. I had to.”

He turned to her, his eyes drawing her own to his.

“I started to wake up when you ran to me, but I played dead. Or near dead.  Near enough to make Joffrey think he could relax and go drink. Did the cunt hurt you?!”

“I’m a little bruised, nothing more.” Sandor’s fury was obvious on his face.

“What do we do now, Sandor?  Joffrey has a key.  He might think to look for you here, even if he does not know about the spare.  They’re sending for the police.  I don’t know that they will believe me if I support you.  Cersei knows… she thinks she knows about us.  She thinks I’ve ruined myself with you!”

He laughed darkly.  “His key is useless if ours remains in the lock.  And as for Cersei…  As if that one was a maid when she went to Lord Baratheon’s bed. If I gambled, I’d place money on it!  No, but you’re right.  When the police come and our door is broke down, she’ll call you mad, or fallen, and they’ll cart me away for what happened to the lady here. We have to be gone from here as soon as we can…” He closed his eyes, brows furrowing, swaying slightly. 

“Your head! You need to rest!”

“I’m well, little bird, don’t fret.” He opened his eyes and raised a hand to her cheek, making her close hers in return, in pleasure.

“Maybe I will lie down a little while.  Put that bowl away and join me.” She smiled and did as she was bid, returning to the bed to find him shaping a space for her within the arc of his body.  She crawled up onto the bed, and wriggled into it.  He sighed deeply, and Sansa finally felt the safety she had been craving for so very long now.

“You’re made to bloody fit there, little bird.”

“As you are made to be there, behind me.”

He laughed deeply, and she felt the vibrations of it through her whole body.  And she felt something else, pushing against her behind as he lay close behind her.

“You don’t know what you are saying.  But say it again, and forget the Southron accent this time? You’ve been with Cersei fucking Lannister too long this night!”

“You are made to be there, behind me.” She let the North into her voice, letting it lilt there, and she felt him burrow his face into her hair.

“God! It might be best that I’m unmanned at the moment.  That hit on my head is the only thing preventing me from making good on Cersei’s ideas of you, girl.” His lips touched the skin behind her ear as he spoke, and she found herself shivering at the implications of his words and the hoarseness of his voice in her ear.  He nipped at her earlobe with his teeth and the trembling increased.

“Cold girl?  I could warm you up.”  His large hand moved from his thigh to hers, running upwards and around to her belly. “If you wished me to?”

“Yes. Yes please.”  She whispered, closing her eyes.

“So bloody polite!  Did they teach you that here? Well, just remember that I taught you other things.  Better things than airs and fucking graces.”

His hand moved down her belly towards the crux of her legs, pushing the nightdress with it as he burrowed his fingers into the join of her.  She found herself moaning as he held her there, the material clinging to the wetness she was making as his fingers started to move, gently rubbing at her.  Then he pulled at the nightdress, bringing it up so that her legs were exposed, and then her thighs… and then…

Without the barrier of the material he could move a large finger through her curls and into her wetness. She moaned as he found the hidden places of her as he had done in his rooms.  She found herself slightly parting her thighs to give him better access as he drew his fingers across her and dipped them within.  She wriggled in front of him as the pleasure increased, pressing against the hardness behind her. She felt it resting in his trousers against the curve of her rump, now exposed as her nightdress lay in folds at her waist.

“God, girl!  You feel like you want me!” 

“I… I do.” She moaned as his fingers found their way inside of her again.  She felt close to the wave she’d felt before, her completion. 

“God help me.” He removed his hand and she keened for it’s loss and for the loss of the building tension between her legs.  But then he was moving away from her on the bed, making room to gently pull her onto her back.  His hands were on his braces and his shirt, removing both quickly as he looked her over, his eyes falling on the wet curls between her legs.  He lay over her, claiming her mouth, his stubble roughly scratching against her chin, her cheeks, even her lips.  She felt the hardness of his manhood against the join of her, through his trousers, and moaned into his mouth as he pushed it against her there.

“Bastard should have hit me harder.” He whispered.  “That’s the only thing’d keep me from fucking claiming your maidenhood girl.  They think it’s gone now anyways…”

Her head spun.  He was right of course.  Whatever happened with the police now, Cersei thought her ruined.  And she had many friends at court she could whisper it to. 

Her thoughts must have been clear on her face because he stopped suddenly, pulling from her. “I didn’t mean that! I shouldn’t have said that! Forgive me, I’m a fucking fool! Sansa, I won’t have you because your virginity doesn’t matter anymore!  I’ll only have you because you want me to take it.”

She looked at him in the near darkness, seeing the earnest look in his eyes.  That this large and coarse man could look so vulnerable and open… it thrilled her to think that she could do this to him, almost as much as it did that his touch could bring her this intense pleasure.  He was a noble, of a sort, but he also seemed common.  He was rude and crude, but he was also gentle and loving.  He was strong and fierce, but he was also still hurt and pained by things in his past he had not shared with her yet.  He was contradiction upon contradiction, and so much more than she imagined she would want.  She raised her lips to his, and whispered against them.

“Teach me.”

He shivered all over before turning to one side, his hands moving quickly on his trouser fasteners.  She watched from her prone position as he pushed at them, releasing himself and becoming fully naked.  For her.

She was no less curious about his manhood than she had been the last time.  More so, perhaps, as she contemplated the thought of him moving it within her.  She had heard the girls gossiping in the dorms at night, and she knew that there would be pain.  She was certain of it now that she saw it again and the size of it.  But when he kissed her fears melted away and that heat returned to her.  He’d said that if she was ready it would be easier, and he’d given her attention already. He moved over her and that heat only grew as she felt the hardness of him pressing against her, bare flesh to bare flesh.

“Tell me to stop.” He was near begging her as he had done when she had removed her clothes for him in his rooms. “Tell me to.”

“Please, Sandor, don’t stop.” He groaned and shifted his weight between her thighs, the nightdress caught between them over her waist.

At first it was just a pressure against the outer core of her.  And then it was more, a slight movement within her that hurt, and she tried not to make a sound that might dissuade him.  He was moving as slowly as he could, bracing himself over her, his eyes lowered as he concentrated.  He moved a hand to stroke at her thigh as she did finally whimper, and he pulled at the nightdress to reveal a breast that he took into his hot wet mouth, urging her body to feel the helping heat that she needed.  But it was when the hand on her thigh burrowed between them and rubbed against her at that special point that she felt something within her both relax and tense at the same time, opening her for him until his length was buried deep within her.  The pain was there still, but the sharpness was gone.

“Sansa” He breathed against her chest as he slowly withdrew, before moving back into her again.  With each movement back and forth she felt his passage within her ease.  And as with the lesson of her completion, she marvelled that she had not been told that it could be like this.  Even the stories of the pain belied how blissful it could be to make that small sacrifice to be this close with him. And they were close.  Joined, with her thighs about his hips, his mouth on hers urging her on with sweet kisses, they were as close as two people might ever be. 

She was ruined, but that word did not really mark what was happening to her.  She was ruined as a building is ruined, pulled apart, but now the rubble of her was reforming into something new.  Something that belonged solely to him.  Something that was shining just for him and her eyes closed for a moment at the brightness he was making in her.

Seeing her like that, he increased his pace, moans emerging from his lips as his hips flexed and his long hair drifted towards her, tickling the skin of her face.  She touched it, making his eyes open and catch hers before he increased his movements again.  She shuddered as the rhythm matched the beating of her heart and she felt the beginnings of the completion he had begun when they had been curled together on the bed.  She moaned his name and felt it wash over her, tensing her around him as he shuddered and finished within her.

They lay there, entwined, hearts beating against the others’.  And then he was looking at her with concern writ on his rugged face.

“Sansa, did I hurt you?”

“Not at all, my love.” She smiled, bringing a languid hand to his scarred face.

Touching him there seemed to affect him strongly, and he pushed his head against her palm.  And then he slowly withdrew from her, and that was a new sensation as well, the absence of him that she had never even known she’d felt all her life so far. 

He moved to the washbasin and returned with the bowl filled with clean water and a new towel.  From the bed she admired his naked form as he moved, the strength in his movements, the solidness of him, the sheen of sweat on his body. But then he returned, laying the bowl on the bed next to her before kneeling between her loose limbs to clean her.   This was another new intimacy and she found herself drowsily laying her head back to concentrate on the feeling of the towel against the ache of her thighs and the slight soreness of her hidden parts.  And when he was done with her, he cleaned himself, more brusquely, and lay down at her side.

“We should rest, but not for long.  We need to work out our escape.  I’ll not have you here a moment longer than is bloody necessary.”  The fierceness was back in his eyes, but his hands were gentle as they ran over her body.  This was not an attempt to arouse her again, he seemed eager just to see and feel as much of her as possible. She felt… claimed by him now and it pleased her.

“Sandor?”

“Yes, Sansa?”

“I won’t be going to London for the season.”

“Oh is that so? Because you are a wanton woman now and they would reject you?” There was a dark smile on his lips, but she wondered if there wasn’t a little of his fears in his words too.

“No.  Because I don’t want anyone but you.  Even if I were still a maiden, I would still want you over all the suitors there might be.”  The North was stronger yet in her voice and she saw that it pleased him.  Her words pleased him.

“Good.  Because I’d beat any man who asked you to fucking ‘promenade’ with him.  You’re mine, little bird.” He growled, his eyes dipping as he rested his head on the pillow.

“Aye” she said sweetly, smiling as sleep claimed first him, and then her.


	12. Chapter 12

Sansa awoke to the feeling of being watched.  But unlike the predator’s eyes that had followed her, and chilled her, in the bathroom, there was a comforting feeling of safety that came from having his eyes on her.  She stretched, more in catlike way than ladylike, and looked to where he stood by the large windows of the room.  A smile spread on her mouth as she remembered what had passed between them.  She could never have imagined that her ‘ruination’ would be so pleasurable, that the alleged death of her honour could have felt so much like a burst of new life.  His dark eyes considered her as he stood there, his shirt hanging open over his trousers, and she enjoyed considering him in return, her eyes unapologetically taking in his broad chest in the moonlight.

“Little bird.” It was a greeting, but it was also the way his burnt mouth shaped words of love.

“How long did we sleep?!” She sat up, drawing the blankets of the bed about herself.  She saw him smile wolfishly.

“Yes, best cover yourself girl before I come back there and claim you again.  And there’s no time for that now.  We slept an hour or so.  But there’s no sign of the police yet.”

“Would it take so long to send someone to the village?

“No. But there’s only a constable there.  If they wanted more men then they’d have to go to the first town over.  Either way, we need to be moving now.”

She nodded and quickly pulled the nightdress back into order, shook out her hair and moved from the bed as he watched her.  The temptation to go to him and to fall into his arms was strong, but they had other concerns.  She stayed near the bed, a hand drifting over the warmth of where they had lain as she looked at him.

“How do we leave the Keep?”

“The house is locked up for the night and there aint a spare for that in the mouth of a beast.  We’ll use the passageway I found. I’d bloody well like to see the bastard who attacked me down there, again anyway.  I won’t give him the chance to hit me from behind this time.”

Sansa didn’t like the idea of a confrontation with the ‘ghost’, but Sandor obviously relished the idea, seemed to be looking forward to it in fact.  He had reason, she supposed, to want to fight.  But that didn’t stop her from worrying for him.

“Don’t look like that, girl!  I ain’t talking about killing him! If I can take the bastard down then we’ve also got a chance at proving I didn’t have anything to do with the attack in the attic!   But if we don’t come across him then the passage can take us as far as the kennels.  The keys to the main gate are there, and we can finally get out of this shithole. And then…”

He paused, the determination about dealing with the ghost replaced by an uncertainty.

“We’ll get you to your family.” He settled on that statement, but Sansa knew why he had been unsure.

“You won’t leave me!” She made a statement of her own.

“Let’s get you home first and think on that when your family have you back.”

“No!  I want to know now. I want to know that we’re going to stay together.” She frowned, and she knew she must look like a pouting young girl, but this was not like wanting the latest fashions, or the latest style in hair… nor even  like wanting, demanding even, to be sent to a certain finishing school in the South.  She needed him.

“I can’t promise you that, little bird.  I could say that we’ll wed” she felt her heart pounding, and she felt oddly dizzy.  “But I’d be wishing you a life as the wife of a groundskeeper! One who’s no doubt just lost their job at that!”

“You’re the son of a lord!”

“I’m the second son of a lord whose father bought his title.  I’m the younger son in a family that has no lands, no influence, and no prospects.  I told you not to be with the old dog, Sansa.  This is what that meant.”

She did go to him then, falling into his readily opened arms. He stroked her hair as she laid her head against him, revelling in the strength of his heart. If it was as strong as hers felt then they would find a way to be together.   “There will be a way.” She said, “I have to believe that there will be a way.”

“For now… for now we have to flee.  You’ve no shoes? Bugger. Okay. Wear my jacket at least.”

She moved to the bed and shrugged on the old tweed, cloaking herself in the scent of him, warming herself in his protection as the large, thick jacket swamped her and her nightdress. He did up the buttons of his shirt quickly, and went to the door, holding back a hand to her which she took readily.

He unlocked the door and cautiously opened it, looking up and down the corridor before bringing her through with him.  He led the way, sheltering her behind him as they quickly stepped along the polished wooden floorboards.  It was dark, but Sansa could make out the familiar sights of the Keep.  The ornate mirrors. The tall, spiked potted plants.  Hat stands and umbrella stands by the great doors.  The winding grand staircase.  Her breath was held as she looked about at all these things, expecting someone to emerge from the shadows at any moment and to shout out an alarm that a man and lady in bloodied clothes were sneaking about the Keep.

But no one did. 

She followed him down the same stairs she had found his prone form at the top of just a few hours back.  They led down to the kitchens, deserted at this hour, but the number of rooms down there where the servants ate, rested, and worked for the house, were just more places where someone could emerge from.  She felt the tension in her rise.

“Breathe, girl.  I’m here.”  He looked back at her, and so it was that she saw the figure first.  She gasped and Sandor released her hand, turning back to face the man who had appeared from the entrance to the cellars.  

“Hello, little brother.” 

The man’s deep voice was soft, quiet, but there was no love in it.

“Gregor!”  Sandor pushed her behind him with one hand, never taking his eyes from the large man ahead of them.

“You’re still as pretty as I remember making you, boy.  Wait… what’s that you got there?”  A dark smile spread across his face, and Sansa knew then that this was the predator she been afraid of.  “Have you been stealing from this fucking honey pot too?”

Sandor growled and charged at the larger man, but a fist to his face knocked him against the white washed walls.  He staggered to his knees, dazed, but as this ‘Gregor’ walked with heavy feet towards Sansa, he raised himself enough to barrel into him and crush him against the other wall.  But his brother was laughing.  It was a deep chilling laugh, a mocking noise. 

Swiftly the man’s immense hand grabbed at Sandor’s throat and slammed him against the wall with it.  She could never have imagined that a man as large and formidable as Sandor could be bested by anyone, but Gregor seemed to contain an unleashed, mindless, violence that Sandor did not.  And he was turning it against his own brother.

“I should have hit you harder.” Sandor was choking. “But I had no reason to kill you.  Before.” He turned his large brutish head and looked at Sansa.  And he smiled.

Sandor kicked struggled against the hold he was in, wrenching at the man’s arm with his hands.

“Though I think this time I’ll kill the girl after I have her.  Spread her blood and her insides about a bit as well.  Let’s see that fucking Lannister bitch cover up a killing in her precious school. I’ll bring her down, and get my fucking house back in fucking order! That card cheat’s sister can go back to fucking her deviant brother in her own house, not mine!”

Sansa felt the fear drain from her, like ice water leaving her veins.  Instead she felt a rush of fire in her, a rush of her love for Sandor, a burst of life in the darkness of these halls. 

And she screamed.  She screamed louder and harder than when Joffrey had scared her in the study.  She screamed so hard her throat quickly became raw and pained.  She screamed, but for a moment she felt like some great bird of prey, screeching out its defiance at the giant.

Gregor dropped Sandor and charged at her, backhanding her and knocking her into a wall as well, but as she dropped she saw Sandor leaping onto his brother’s back, wrapping his arm around the other’s throat and squeezing with all his might.

As it went dark Sansa heard the running of feet, warning shouts and then another woman’s scream.

***

She woke to Sandor leaning over her.  It took her a moment to focus on anything besides his face, but that was her anchor to the world as the rest of it swam and then settled like stilling water.  She sat up quickly, too quickly, and shook.

“Gregor?! Where-”

“In custody.  Lie back down.” She did as told, feeling the silken velvet of the chaise longue and the thick blanket covering over the tweed jacket she still wore.  She realised she was in Cersei’s parlour.

“Your scream brought the house down to the kitchens.  It took me and two other men to subdue him.  But he aint getting out of those manacles… nor the padlocked cold room in the kitchens.  Wagon’s coming for him in an hour or so.”

Sansa closed her eyes, her head swimming. “Are you all right, Sandor?”  She asked when she could focus again.

“Don’t fret about me.” he looked concerned for her.  “He gave you a nasty bad black eye, Sansa.  And you were out cold for far too bloody long.” 

“I don’t care about that.  I care about whether you are in the clear!”

“Yeah, the police asked me a hundred fucking questions, but they’ve accepted that Gregor was behind the attack… and that we were looking for him.  Of course, they raised their fucking eyebrows over you sneaking about in a nightdress with the groundskeeper.  Sorry, girl.  The bloody tongue waggers will hear about this.”  
“It doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters except that you’re here.  But why did they let you stay with me?!”

His voice was low and dangerous when he spoke again, but his fingertips gently stoked her temples, her hair, her cheek.  “I didn’t give them a fucking choice in the matter.”

The door opened then, and Cersei entered.  She saw him touching Sansa and took a deep breath as though to start berating him.

“Fuck off Cersei.  It’s nothing to do with you.” Sandor snarled.

“As headmistress she’s in my charge!”

“Well you aint going to be headmistress much longer are you? Don’t you think all those lords and ladies who entrusted you with their daughters are going to want some fucking reparation for the danger they were in?

“He’s _your_ brother!”

“He’s nothing to do with me.  Not since he gave me this!” He gestured at the scar on his face and Sansa gasped.  “It don’t matter now little bird, nothing does as long as you’re okay.” He smiled at her and she returned it.

“You can’t… you can’t think you can be together?! Oh this is precious! The lady and the groundskeeper!”

Around the pain in her head Sansa remembered something Gregor had said, and several things slotted into place in her thoughts.  “Better the lady and the groundskeeper than the lady and her… twin brother.”

Cersei gasped and Sandor looked to the door of her bedchamber.

“She’s right.  Or maybe you want to prove her wrong by opening up all your fucking rooms to us!”

Cersei jabbered out some confused attempt at indignation, but then the door to the bedchamber opened and a handsome, fair haired man came out, wearing pyjamas and a plush smoking jacket.

“Jaime! You can’t-!”

“Can’t what Cersei? Can’t spend my life in denial? No.  I can’t.  The Stark girl is right.”

Sansa looked at them both in horror.  Jaime was unrepentant but Cersei was crying with her shame, her hands covering her face.

“I told you Cersei.  We need to start over somewhere where no one knows us! Especially if this little bitch is going to be telling all of society what we’ve been doing.”

Sandor stood, sneering. “Be very fucking careful Lannister! Or you’ll need to be going abroad to get away from my fucking fists.”

“I can’t… I can’t… everything I have is in this wretched estate.  Robert’s cut me off entirely! He won’t even reply to my telegrams!”

Jaime went to her and took her hands. “We’ll sell the Keep.  For whatever we can get.  Let’s just go!”

Sansa struggled to sit up and Sandor helped her.

“We’ll buy it.” She said firmly.

“Girl?!” 

“I mean it.  We’ll buy it back from them.”

“We…?”

“You asked if my mother was wealthy and if that had overridden her lack of a title?  She is.  She’s the daughter of the tinned fish magnate, Hoster Tully.  But my father never accepted her dowry, he didn’t want people to think he wed her for her wealth.  So it’s been held in trust for Arya and myself.  My share, plus whatever dowry my father would settle on me-”

“I aint marrying you for your money neither!”

She took his hand and smiled warmly at him, watching as her smile erased the frown on his face, how it woke the softness in him.

“I know you aren’t.”

“Others will say you did, Clegane. They’ll laugh about the groundskeeper who turned the lady’s head and got at her money through her-”

“Oh do be fucking quiet Lannister!” snapped Sansa at the man, who balked at her cursing.

“Well, I say!” murmured Jaime, but he held his tongue after that.

Sandor was staring at her intently.

“What do you think Sandor?  Would you like to live here?  You could live on the land you grew up on.  You could walk it with the dogs.  With me.  With our… children?”

His lips were on hers so fast it pushed the breath from her, and he cradled her in his arms, crushing the worn tweed coat against her.

“Of course I fucking will.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue and sequel teaser...

_One year later…_

 

She smiled as she recognised the familiar hand of Lady Margaery in the swirling address writ on the stiff cream envelope. 

But Sansa put the letter to one side.  Better to deal with less pleasant tasks now and then to treat herself with the effusive and fragrant letter from her friend in London when her work was done.  Sitting at her desk, overlooking the lawns, she turned to the latest notes from the estate’s tenants, detailing their efforts to turn the Clegane lands back into profitable businesses, and opened her ledgers.  Gregor had left the accounts of the estate in a dreadful disarray, and the relationship between Lord and tenant had been even worse.  It had taken a very long time for Sansa to charm the gruff working men.  But if she had managed it with Sandor…

The past year had been full of a happiness she had not realised could exist before.  It was not that their lives were now entirely without issues. Money was an ongoing concern for the estate.  Her dowry had bought them the Keep, at a reasonable price given Cersei’s ‘circumstances’, and it had paid for the renovations they both wanted.  Sansa had insisted on demolishing the rooms in the attic and Sandor had prioritised blocking the tunnel between the house and the kennels.  Both works had unearthed horrors.  In the attic, a number of spyholes.  And in the tunnels… a long dead body.  The poor creature was unidentifiable, but the discovery had only strengthened the case against Gregor, and he had been sentenced to death for murder.

Sandor had closed himself off from for a long time after the discovery, turning for a while to the bottle until she had had very strong words with him.  But even now he did not talk about his brother and what he had done to his face when they were but boys.  She could obviously assume fire was involved, but it was beyond her comprehension how it could come about that something had gone so terribly wrong with one Clegane, and not with the other. 

Her husband was gentle and sweet.  Still coarse and rude on the outside of course, but the softness in him that he showed her was there every single morning as he carefully left their bed, emerging from the pile of dogs there that ran out after him, and quietly went about his morning rounds of the estate, leaving her to sleep.  At night, he did the same, still walking the grounds with his lamp, the four dogs at heel.  Making sure his little bird could sleep on, safe and sound. 

Sansa smiled down at Lady who lay in a soft basket at the feet of the desk.  The poor thing was missing her morning walks with Sandor and the boys.  But she was far too far along now to be romping with her adopted pack across the land and through the copse.  The swell of the dog’s belly stirred envy in Sansa.  A year had passed and still there were no signs of the children she’d hoped to bring Sandor.  She pushed papers aside until she found the note from Doctor Pycelle of Harley Street agreeing to meet her at her convenience.  The advert in the Lady had said that he had brand new scientific methods that could help a woman get with child.  Of course, it had been phrased far more delicately than that, but Sansa had cut out that advert months ago and hidden it in a romance novel Sandor was unlikely to be flicking through.  She still needed some convincing reason to go to London though…

Since her wedding to Sandor she had been cut off from all polite society there.  Margaery had kept in touch, asserting that Sansa was much better off not involved anyway, and that staying in the country with her large and muscular new husband was bound to be better for her than attending boring and stuffy parties, balls and teas.  But as much as she loved the home they were building together, as much as she had found that she loved running the details of the business of the estate, she still found herself yearning for social and intellectual interactions with someone other than the housekeeper, Mrs White, or the new butler, Brooks.

Lady rubbed her muzzle on Sansa’s leg and she petted the large malamute’s head gently.  Which of the three large dogs was the father she wondered?  She slightly hoped it might be the wolfhound’s, so that this house could also be filled with wolf like beasts as her home in the North had been.  Lord Eddard had brought Lady south with the rest of the Stark wedding party almost a year ago.  The first meeting between Lord Stark and the new, untitled, owner of Clegane’s Keep had been… difficult.  And things were still… difficult. Her father wasn’t all that happy about the circumstances of their courting, but at least he did not know as much about their indiscretions as Margaery had winkled out of her through numerous letters, and gossipy chats before Sansa’s wedding!  Oh, how she missed the effervescent brunette Tyrell!

Oh blow it! Thought Sansa, and she put aside the pile of letters still to be read and reached for Margaery’s letter, ripping it open with a silver letter opener.  She was pleased to find a longish note and a thick piece of card. An invitation!

But she read the note first, skimming it for details, knowing that she would curl up with it again later and read it over and over again, imaging the colour and life of London and court that Margaery was describing. In it she was complaining about not having seen Sansa for so very long, and that she had decided that it was certainly beyond time that the old hags of court got over their snooty appraisal of Sansa and her husband, and that she should come visit.  Especially, she wrote, as there was an engagement to celebrate! Sansa gasped as she read those words.  She had not even known that Margaery was being courted.  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  Margaery was being courted by all the eligible bachelors.  Sansa had not realised that she’d finally been courting one of them back!  She turned to the invitation.  A party! To celebrate the engagement, and addressed to Lady Sansa and Sandor Clegane!

She was just admiring the quality of the card, the gilt on its edges, when Sandor walked into the room, smelling of the chill winds of winter and of the dogs that bounded in after him and nosed curiously around their pregnant friend, their mate, Lady.

She smiled as he went straight to her and curled his large arms about her, before slipping a cold hand past the white cotton of her blouse and into her corset.

“Ouch!” She exclaimed.

“Too cold, little bird?”

“No, no it’s not that… I must still be tender from last night.” She warmed instantly between her legs as remembered how they had loved each other the night before.  How he had shown her, yet again, how even though he’d once said that the act of mating between humans was different to that of animals, it was only _mostly_ different.  The wondrous things he had taught her in the last year!

“I’ll be gentler later.  Maybe.” She could feel the smirk in his voice, and the hardness of him building behind her.  “What’s that?”

“An invitation!! Margaery’s gotten engaged!”

“Poor fool”

“Don’t be mean, she likes you very much.  There’s to be a party! Can we go?! Please?!”

He scowled. “London? A party? I don’t know Sansa, the old witches with their brooms stuck up their arses will spend the whole time looking down their noses at you.  I won’t have them upsetting you.”

“They won’t! Please! Please can we go?!” She knew how young she sounded.  But she really wanted this!

“And Lady’s due soon… you’ll want to be here for the pups surely.”

“There’s time before the party!”

“Your mind’s set isn’t it little bird?”

“You know me.”

He sighed. “Yes, I do, my love. Very well.”

“Good! We’ll need to have you measured as soon as possible-”

“Fucking hell.” He glowered.

“You can’t wear those old tweeds! You can’t!”  She smiled shyly at him. “Perhaps I will get some new undergarments made at the same time.”

“I shouldn’t bother, I’ll only rip them off you.”

She smiled and rose from her seat, moving into his arms where she fit so very perfectly.  “Thank you” she whispered between kisses that were stirring both of them and making her think that the ledgers could wait.  Sandor seemed to agree, pushing them aside suddenly, and quickly lifting her to the desk, before pushing roughly at her skirts.

As rapture began to take her, Sansa also thought with triumph of how she now had the perfect excuse to visit London, and to see Doctor Pycelle!

_To be continued…_

**Author's Note:**

> The Lady is a magazine for genteel ladies
> 
> chit – derogatory term for a small or frail woman
> 
> rooky – New recruit (this is the old spelling)


End file.
